Of Brothers and Angels
by Breaeden Swordwind
Summary: A fight and another look at Jenell and Blasa. Pretty Simple right? Ha! Read and Review! BTW Anon reviews are accepted.
1. Homes are Flammable

Prologue (Part 1)

Authors note: Yes that is right prologue part one. Luckily there are only two parts but still the prologue is lengthy, predominately because I'm longwinded. Yes, that is a new person I'm adding for this fanfic and yes he will be the co-main character. Co because Siegfried will be important as well.

Please review this and send any comments or questions you might have. And have fun, that's kind of important. If your not having fun stop reading… after about Chapter 3 or so because for now I'm doing the none-to-fun backstory work.

P.S. Most of the dialogues is in the story actually German but I may have other languages moved in depending on their location in the world. If that occurs it will be translated to English for your convenience.

He was born the son of hedge nobility in the Holy Roman Empire. The father was no one of import, the vassal of a vassal of an Elector. His family had few enemies but his father felt so certain that those few would kill the son out of vengeance that he never bothered to give the boy a name. In later years he would have been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. In his time he was an eccentric.

The boy lived a cloistered life. He had his four-walled room, his books and a sword. And a pen, a pen with lots of ink. He wrote, more then was necessary, pages upon pages. He could write twelve tongues but could speak three, which were Latin, German, and a little English. None of his books survived the fire.

As part of the dieing tradition of feudal obligation, the boy learned to use his sword. His father taught him inside the boy's room. His father who always came dressed in full armor for fear his son might stab him…on purpose. The boy had a predisposition to the sword, or maybe it was that it was one of only three things he could do in the years he spent his cage. Either way he grew to be quite skilled with his weapon of choice, the bastard sword.

It was well that the father wore armor for the son would have stabbed him. The boy felt little emotion. His ability to empathize with others was severely stunted and feelings were alien to them. Whenever he read a tragic story in one of his books and felt that mist of sadness gather in his body he would try to expel it like a disease. His feelings were things that were meant to harm him and he fought against them.

As time passed and he read books talking about the world outside his room he developed the desire to escape. To go out into the world and…

He didn't know what he wanted to do once he got out but surely it was better then being stuck in this room.

The isolation had more adverse effects and with each year that passed he became more socially inept. He could speak German and Latin but his way of speaking was stilted and strange. The only things that gave him the ability to speak with what little vernacular knowledge he had were his discussions with his mother. She was amazing, for all of his fathers paranoid tendencies he was liberal with education, which both wife and son benefited from. She had a firm oral grasp of fully ten languages but, unlike the boy, could write only one. His talks with her were brief but molding. And the boy took to molding quickly.

However, when he was twelve, though he didn't know he was that age, it being impossible to mark the passage of days in a room with no windows, things changed.

The night was calm and had the boy been outside he could have heard the birds screaming placidly on their branches. The night was pregnant with a sense of foreboding. Silver-etched silence reigned in the woods near the castle. Two red eyes moved through the brush along with a third larger one.

The boy was going over another book that future generations wouldn't remember. It was _Summa Theologica_ by the sainted Thomas Aquinas. The boy had not displayed a desire toward the theological life style and truly his isolation had numbed him to the need for religion. However, he was quickly running out of books that he hadn't read and this was one of them.

The night was tense and had the boy been outside he could have heard the birds go silent and flutter from their branches. The three eyes were getting closer. The sword of Damocles was poised.

He finished reading the paragraph he was on as dinner was slipped through the crack of his door. Beef drizzled rivulets of blood on an iron plate releasing a faint steam that laboriously carried the smell to his tasting nose. The scholar devoured hungrily.

When he had finished he sat down at the desk, papers flutter with the wind of his arrival and the painted shadows in the candlelight. He wrote:

_La espada del agua1_

_is the last of the saga_

_Der schwertführer2_

_Touches on the fervor_

His pen stopped abruptly as he finished his last r. Had he heard something? A high grating whine came through the door, but not just through the door, through the halls. The sound was from so far away and had reverberated so many times over it was impossible to ascertain where it was originating from. "aaaaaaaagh" the sound came again through the door. What was that sound? He hadn't heard it before but it was tantalizingly familiars. Ransacking his mind a memory came when he had sliced himself with a sword in his younger days. The pain had seemed so intense then and he had just started making noise not bothering to give words to the pain. The English word for this was scream, German schrei, French chillido, Portuguese grito, and in Russian крик.

Someone was screaming? Why? Curiosity infected him but he could neither get out of his stone prison nor look through the solid wood door. He ears pricked to attention as he heard feet shuffle down the hallway. He heard the lock release as the person opened his door. It was his mother. "Come, hurry, we are leaving." She blurted in a rush.

The lad merely slanted his head and stared at her confused. "I don't have time to explain," she said "now come on." She began down the hall and turned around pleading him to come. Before he left he grabbed his sword but when he returned to the verge of his room he hesitated. This was his chance to escape. He breathed deep and charged through and after he mother, who was already sprinting down the corridor.

He quickly caught up with her. Men-at-arms and other servants were running down the hallways in frenzy. What had happened? His mother yelled into the air in front of her and let the sound drain back to him, " Someone has attacked and infiltrated the castle we need to get your father and escape!"

Someone? It had only been one person? This was indeed a frightening proposition.

At that moment they turned a corner and slammed into the air in front of a large cavernous room, _dinning area perhaps?_ The boy thought. That's when he noticed the fighting…and his father.

The old lord of the castle was facing off against an azure-armored knight with a massive…Bidenhänder…no the hilt was too long; it was a Zweihander of some kind, a great sword in the layman's terms. The dark-sky colored knight slew three men who advanced to help their master with a single circular swing of his sword, which was as much a creature of flesh as an object of steel. _Such mastery! He is the quintessence swordmanship. _However, the knowledge that her husband was doomed did not sit well with the boy's matriarch and she began to run toward her husband in an unthinking attempt to help. The boy, however, knew his mother could not hope to win and grab her wrist in an attempt to stop her. His restraint back fired, he mother forward momentum combine with his inertia caused the matron to slip and fall backwards banging her head on a peak in the texture of the stone floor. Blood began pouring from her head and silently a pool of it began to expand form her head. The child knelt beside his mother but she was already lost. His emotions flickered to life and he would have cried had he not heard the death scream of his father.

The boy's eyes shot to the blade swinging abomination, just now taking time to register the sickly growth on the man's right arm. His father was on the floor in two very different locations. The nightmare, the boy had no other word, even in his erudite mind, too place upon the creature but somehow felt it fit into place perfectly, turned its red eyes to the boy.

The boy left his dead mother in a pool of her own blood and dashed back down the corridor from whence he came. He had no idea where he was going, this being his first time out of his room; he took random turns and hoped not to find a dead end. The clamor of his armored pursuer rang in his ear reverberating through a distracted mind.

_NO! I killed my mother she dead, muerto, mortuus, taub und gefühllos! _So he sprinted blindly through the corridors pursued by both a man (maybe?) and his own self-loathing. Something he would become intimately familiar with in later years.

As he went further through the halls flames became more and more common. Flames that were not in anyway contained and were eating at the surrounding stone wood supports. He could feel the bits of soot he was running through hit his exposed skin. He swelled the flame around his and also the stench of burning flesh for here bodies littered the floor. He was following the man-beast's way in and thus he must be approaching an exit.

He passed an open an iron door into the massive, burning entranceway to the keep of the castle. He stopped and slammed the door behind him. Throwing down the bar and placing his outstretched left hand on it to keep it closed. If he held long enough the azure armored abomination would die of asphyxiation or immolation.

The mutated miles slammed its blade into the door making a slight indent and shaking the door and the wall that contained it. However, the boy held his left hand against the door. Another shock hit the door and the sword burst through in a plowing thrust near the boys arm. It hovered there and he watch as an eye, an _eye_, that was in the middle of the blade made visual contact with his. The eye had a dark iris but from the pupil flared flames which sliced their ways through the iris to the white of the eye. It lids opened wide in a voiceless scream. _Stop looking at me, I'm not a sinner, I didn't mean to killer, AARGH, _his guilt flared to unholy life.His right hand impacted the eye which was disgustingly soft yet oddly resilient. The creature on the other side of door screamed in pain withdrawing the blade and slamming it massive form against the gate. Another indentation formed. He heard a loud crack over head. His mind exploded.

He found himself on the ground his left arm pinned under a burning support beam. The nerves on his arm were magma biting into him. He pulled on his arm. Nothing. Agony blanketed his mind and sent him into a panic. Adrenaline was in him. He yanked his arm free and ran. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. The beast was still slamming on the portal but at least now the flaming wreckage further barred it. Still…

He let his mind clear, though the blackness of his mind blinked red. The flames in the rafters began to hop down the walls. Making small jumps they moved into a line from wall to wall forming a wall of fire. _Get through that bastard! _

Guilt coursed through his mind, pain coursed through his arm, and he coursed through the burning hallway to the night. He stepped into dark. He nearly threw up.

This was the first time he had left the keep. He had never been to or seen such an open area and the empty air made him nauseous. Now he did throw up.

Looking at the ground as he ran straight he vomited on the ground. He couldn't stop; he didn't know how long the barrier would hold the berserk bastard. He wished he hadn't eaten so recently as he coughed up partially digest beef on the run. A thought hit across the head. _Can it track me by following the trail of regurgitated foodstuffs?_

Fortunately, his stomach was now empty and he was coughing up dry heaves.

He didn't know how far he had gone, he couldn't look up for fear that he might become even sicker, but he trip over a root. He kept his eyes shut, his stomach convulsions were beginning to stop and he didn't want them to start again. He must be in the woods though so he moved forward carefully with both arms extended. After, groping his way through the woods for what seemed like hours began to hear a faint whooshing noise. No more like a thousand…bells ringing in a cacophony. He felt his foot slip on something and he fell forward. Banging his head on a hard object, he blacked out.

He woke up and by without thinking opened his eyes. Convulsion racked his stomach as his body tried to loose whatever still remained in his stomach, with little success. The idiot that he was, the boy had opened his eyes looking straight up into the sky. Shutting out the light he rolled over and buried his face in the dirt. Laying their prone, face to the dirt he must have looked like the most pathetic ostrich ever born, at least if his book descriptions of the ostriches were true.

He opened his eye again and look to the side. Again he started to convulse. Again he jammed his head in the dirt. He groaned, _Agoraphobia if my Latin does not desert me. _He tried to move his left arm up to near his face in a futile pathetic gesture but he couldn't feel it. He looked at it from the corner of his eye and noticed that as he moved his shoulder the arm just dragged. The pain came back in his mind as he recalled the timber crushing his arm from the elbow down. He hoped it wasn't permanent. _Oh well at least it doesn't hurt anymore. _He knew he was in denial.

For the next few hours his eye would open and shut as he got used to the open spaces. It wasn't particularly comfortable; he had a root digging into his crotch creating a strange mix of irritation and pain. He shifted to alleviate the problem. When his Agoraphobic reaction had ebbed to a mere light-headedness he began to get. Up. When he was fully erect the world swirled around him and he had to kneel and steady himself with three limbs,two feet and his right hand.

The same bell sound tinkled through his aching head calming him a little. Surveying the area his gaze alighted on a brook that was running over some rocks. _That's what I lost my equilibrium on; _he thought remembering his fall last night, _no, that's not the phrase… I lost my balance that's it_. Bending down he dunked his face in the liquid ice, taking down mouthfuls of the precious serum. Down stream the water turned black as soot from the boys face clouded the clear water.

Vaguely he wondered how the murderer, _the other murder I must remember,_ hadn't killed him. Surely it could have caught up with him. Maybe he was lucky and it couldn't see him in the pre-morning dark. He didn't feel relieved by the thought. He was so troubled by the thought that he didn't notice that the head that should have been pulsing with pain from striking a root was completely clear.

He began to follow the stream in its path down a hill and through the forest. While he walked he inspected his left arm to see if it was broken. All the bones seemed solid but the skin was burnt and seemed to even have partially melted and reformed in some places. He was now very glad he could not feel the arm.

He hoped the stream he was following would take him to civilization so that maybe he might find a doctor or someone who could fix his arm, _how dubious that_. However, the brook dumped its contents into a large basin at the bottom of which was a pond.

Decsending the slope that fell into the pond he stopped at the brink. Staring down he noticed a face on the water. He had read about these they were called Speigelbild, reflections, отражение, or reflexión. _This is what I look like, _he thought staring at the alien face.

The face was young, and early adolescent, he would probably have two more growth surges left. The hair was an unruly mess that fell to his eyebrows in the front and to the middle of his neck in the back. From his hair he could determine a little of his lineage. It was mostly brown and guessed based on the area of the Holy Roman Empire he was in it was probably Saxon blood, maybe the southern vanguard of the Jutes had sired him but that was less likely. However, he must have had a recent Gaelic ancestor as threads of blond intertwined their way through the mat of brown. His eyes, however, he was less sure of, at least as to their decent. They had a yellow iris. He didn't know of any European or Eastern peoples with yellow irises.

After, the brief distraction of descent, he stood up. He was growing more and more accustomed to the open spaces. Though he still felt uncomfortable, and his hand when to the back of his head to scratch an imaginary itch, he was capable of standing on two feet and felt ready to leave for the nearest town. Picking a direction at random he left into the world.

1: _Spanish _The sword of water

2. _German _The fire sword /I don't believe the grammar is right but that's because I needed it to rhyme


	2. The Sun is Crying

Prologue (part two)

By Breaeden Swordwind 

Time passed as is its wont and the boy eventually found civilization. He skirted it at first, not wanting to enter but did, though before he swore to himself not to linger. He was uprooted now and had no desire to bind himself to the ground just yet. He walked into the first town and just stared. People busied themselves walking from place to place. Occasionally someone would walk into a building that had a sign hanging over it. Most of the signs were craved in the shape of an object, presumably related to the activities carried out beneath, though some had writing. On one such sign written in blazing gold upon luscious burgundy was, "The Courtesan's Midnight Ride". He made a point of not entering that building.

The building he did enter was adorned with a sign that was shaped like a loaf of bread. Smells of baking wafted lackadaisically into the streets instilling such travelers as the boy to take passing curiosity as to what delectables the shop might contain. The door of the bakery closed behind him and he slipped up to the counter. Behind the counter was a door and to both of its flanks were shelves with bread, several kinds but all equally appealing to the eyes of a boy who had been living off of shrub berries and the occasional rabbit.

From the door to the back stepped out a grizzled old matron. Beneath her eyes hung bags that dangled to her cheeks, which in turned seemed to droop. It was as though being near the heat of the oven for so long had caused her face to melt. "What can I get you?" she said in a very vernacular German that took the boy a moment to decipher. The women chewed the air inside her mouth as she waited with a sedate impatience for his response.

" I entreat you, purveyor, for a loaf of bread and your freshest pastry", he said in his stilted manner.

"What?" she asked with her intolerant calmness.

"Er… could you sell, me…uh… a loaf of bread and a pastry." He shot of in single word bursts, looking chided.

"Oh, why didn't you say so?" she snatched a loaf of bread and half-apathetically tossed it behind her back at him, "Be right back with that pastry" she sighed at him as she opened the door to the back.

This was his chance. He bolted. The door slammed behind him and he was already past the last house of the town before the old women managed to return from the back room holding the forsaken snack.

He moved on to the next town and had similar luck with his thievery.

The towns of Europe were now markedly coalescing into more the just village hamlets where each person was his own carpenter, baker, and farmer. People had now known, even in the more remote areas of the former Christendom that a person specialized in his labor was advantageous, however with recent wars and conflicts of the Reformation had led to deaths and instability. People knew that they could not risk placing their entire livelihood on the backs of specialized workers who might be dead at any moment. Though in many areas were still heaving under the turmoil of the Reformation but with the death of Martin Luther four years ago The Holy Roman Empire collapsed into a brief respite. A respite that the people used to go back to there jobs as sellers and blacksmith, as seamstresses and butchers.

This was the climate that the boy found as he traveled the roads of Germany for the next three years. He survived off of stolen meat and river water. Occasionally the river water would leave him sick or a poorly cooked, half-rotten, cutlet would poison him for a time but he survived. When his cloths became worn he stitched them. When they were to worn to stitch he nabbed new ones at the nearest town.

Most townspeople paid him little mind, there were many men and boys who had been shuffled up by the recent wars and drifted from town to town in the drunken haze of day-to-day existence.

His arm never recovered from the burning it had taken. Though it grew with his body and looked normal to the passing onlooker, the boy could neither move the limb nor feel the winds that blew upon him as he traveled the roads. It would be assumed that this would be a handicap to the slight-of-hand that he needed to obtain his daily bread. However, when he spoke with shopkeeper the merchant's eyes would become so fixed on the arm that didn't move that he could slip a few coins from the counter or a small pastry up one of his long sleeves without being spotted.

The two growth spurts he was due for came and went. By the end he was on the taller end of the spectrum for his time. His hair scraped many a door archway when he enter the shops he would be looting. His face was hard, but had a cool handsomeness to it. The back of his jaw was slightly curved but not so much so as to be construed as effeminate. His eyes were somewhat large for his face and the golden iris that resided within them seemed to be too lazy to focus in on people he wasn't directly talking to, preferring instead to gaze at the horizons. The horizon that was at the edge of the world and the one that was in his head.

Drifting around like this made him realize how wide the world was. Indeed, he felt that he could walk forever and never see the same place twice. The thought made him lightheaded and dizzy. So much space was pressing in on him.

Traveling was still widely considered unsafe as bandits prowled the roads and a merchant would often sleep with sweaty ponds when moving his shipments. However, next to roads the merchant could now find the bodies of vagabonds who had apparently been slain by the one or ones they had intended to ambush. Once a merchant found amidst such a scattering of bodies a young women crying. The girl's blond hair was frayed and knotted and she clutched a dagger to her chest. "Did you kill these me?" asked the merchant as he bent down to her.

"No", she responded, a twitch playing near her left eye, which, along with the right, was distant and unseeing, " I led them"

"Then what happened?" said the merchant in the facsimile of a consoling voice. He had noticed the girl's beauty and hoped she might allow him to…comfort her further.

She coughed up five words, "A boy with yellow eyes". Letting the merchant help her up she gave five more, "killed all men, not me"

The boy spent his nights reading the paper fruits of the printing press, which was silently celebrating its one-hundredth birthdays. The fire would burn near him, illuminating such texts as "The Prince" or "March of Folly". When he was tired of reading, he would lie back on a root or fallen tree and sculpt images in the fire.

While traveling through Rouen, traipsing close to France, he bumped into a man. The man had blond hair that was slightly shorter then the boy's own mane and on his hip placidly dangled a rapier. The man's cloths were clearly of a fine cut but had been dirtied by extensive traveling. They were both sitting at a bar, the man had a drink in a large a glass but was drinking it only in his mind and the young man had no drink as he had not the money to spare.

"Do you know," sighed the stranger in French, "What it is like to be looking for something but not knowing what it is?" The boy let the words float in the room and fade away in the pre-twilight calm. This place would be filled with raucous men once the sun set but for now it was silent, with just the sound of the bartender order the waitress about in the preparation for later. " I didn't think so." The Frenchman continued, " I have been cast out by those I trusted and managed to hide myself in a cave. Only, that wasn't how it was supposed to be. I feel like my path in life took a wrong turn, an epiphany that was supposed to occur didn't happen. All I have is a half-memory that I should have met a girl."

_Amy._ The thought came to the boy from somewhere out of mind but appeared in his head all the same. He couldn't decipher what the word meant. Only that it was important. The German stood up and walked out of the inn as the sun hit the horizon. The color of the sun began to be crushed against the horizon and bled outwards. _The sun dies every day._

After his three years of wandering had passed the boy decided to try settling down outside a town in Saxony. Near the town, well it was hamlet really, were two adjacent cities where lines of trade passed and the boy could make a killing as a thief.

It was fall when he arrived and the trees were burning in their leafy pyres and would burst forth from the twig ashes to the bud of spring like the Phoenix of lore.

Near the village the boy built a small but functional lean-to. It had a triangular back in which two walls met, there was not enough space between the walls for sleeping but he could squirrel away what few things he had, such as his sword. Where the third wall to the complete the triangle would have been was the entrance. It was nestled in a little valley by a creek. He slept there at nights and during the day went to either of the two nearby trading cities to steal whatever he needed.

He was returning from such a day of stealing with a decent haul of two loaves of bread and a new hatchet he would need to gather wood for the coming winter. The sun was still high in the sky but it threatened to plummet quickly as fall suns had a tendency to do. He was coming over the ridge when he saw a girl looking into his home. He stood back a second to assess the situation. The girl didn't have a weapon and her way of moving was a bit awkward for a person with any skill with a weapon. He deemed her not a threat and walked up behind her.

He was within spitting range before she noticed him. The girl turned sharply. She was pretty and of an age with him. Her bark brown hair fell on the coarse fibers of a peasant dress. Her cheeks took up a faint reddish hue that the boy didn't recognize, "Oh, I'm sorry. Do you live here?" she said, her voice vibrated slightly. She was uncertain.

He nodded.

"Oh," she said sitting down on the dirt floor of the lean-to, both legs stacked one on top of the other, "You don't mind if I sit here do you?"

He shook his head as he set the bread and hatchet on a blanket that rested in the back alcove of the lean-to. He then began to gather what sticks he still had left over in his lumber pile to make a small fire, not enough to provide heat but to illuminate.

"What's your name?" the girl asked and looked into his eyes. Hers were a green that stabbed the mind and had a certain spark in them, which he couldn't define but would notice once he started to feel lust.

He shrugged, _to the nine Circles of Hell if I know. _The shrug expressed his attitude to the thought of his namelessness better then all the words in all the languages he knew.

The girl picked up a bit of this but decided he needed a name if only so she could have something to call him. " I know! I learned this name in church. I wasn't paying attention so I don't know whom it's about but I think it sounds like someone pure and holy so you will like it. It's Luzifer".

The boy almost laughed. Of course, he knew what it meant, but he didn't care much. It was the first name he had been given the name the rest of his life would come to define. He wasn't about to turn it down. He nodded in acquiescence to his new title; actually it was more of a bow. He never thought someone could so perfectly peg him to words.

The twigs were set up in a pyramid like a replica of some sacrificial temple of an ancient culture now lost to time. He took some flint and steel he had stolen some days before and struck it once. A slight dying spark flew into the darkness. He impelled it to burn. As soon as it hit the wood a flame surged up from the sacrificial temple that was, ironically, being sacrificed to illuminate them. It came up with such suddenness that the girl fell onto her back. " What was that?" she gasped, several hair endings were singed beyond repair and giving of faint trails of smoke.

" Es algo Yo hago." The boy said in a tone that would leave no room for a discussion. That is if she had known Spanish.

"What?"

"It's a menial task I am able to perform." He said in his still blunt tone, but she still looked confused. "It's…something…I…do," he reiterated struggling to pick out the best words for the current situation.

She grunted slightly and pulled up to the fire. The sun was setting, its gaze had already retreated behind the trees and could no longer spy on them with its demon-red eye.

The boy…no…_Luzifer now, _grabbed the bread he had stolen and gave her one of the matching pair. "Thank you, Luzy" she spoke through a bite of the heart teeth breaking crust. It was the best food she had eaten in a while. German peasants were infamously worse off then those of both England and France, and she had spent many a meal wanting.

Luzifer noticed she was staring at his eyes but didn't bother to move his attention from his food. Darkness enveloped them and when she noticed it the girl started. " Oh damn, I have to go, my father gets angry when I stay out late. Cavorting with demons he calls it." Luzifer, _I like this new name,_ laughed into his bone-filled mind, " I'll come out tomorrow after noon okay?" he nodded barely acknowledging her words. Introvert would have been an understatement.

She ran off the stopped and turned around, " My name's Blasa!" she yelled and ran off. Her name hung in the air around the fire, and Luzifer etched it into the twisting yellow and red tongues of flame.

She returned the next day and they talked. The day after she came and the one after that so that it became a ritual that she would come to see him from after the sun had begun its decent until it committed suicide falling against the horizon. The two of them laughed and played in the flush of adolescence, those last bursts of pretend play before the shackles of full adult hood. Blasa was adventurous and loved trying to chase down Luzifer or get in tasles with him. Luzifer was calmer, though he humored her, preferring, to forget his past in the unthinking quiet of his swordsmanship. When it began to get dark Luzifer would start a fire with his one strike of flint on steel and read the girl books he had stolen at town. The girl herself was illiterate but Luzifer took it upon himself to teach her to read German at the very least.

Eventually, the boys mind began to age and the slight tendrils of lust began to appear in his mind though he had no comprehension of what the meant. His eye began being drawn away from the girls face to other parts of her body. He felt eternally uncomfortable when she came close to him. When, he looked in her eyes he saw that same glint in her eyes and finally found a word to match it. _Seductive, caring, innocent. _

For days he fasted, having read in his childhood that in the Far East monks did so when they were confused, and offered all of the results of his thievery to Blasa. He was in the darkness after she had left when dizziness came over him. Collapsing to his knees he stared into his fire and felt his right hand begin to tremble. He was thinking of Blasa. He could feel the wispy fingers of emotion began to wrap around his mind, pictured her in his mind. No, something was wrong, she was ungarbed. Why wasn't she wearing cloths? Why did it feel so disgustingly good? The boy's heart beat harder then he had ever felt and it pumped confusion through every pore of his body. His trembling right hand began to move down his chest stopping between the torso and the legs. A palpable aura of despair began to come over him as he felt himself desire something he could not construe.

That's when his guiding light appeared. It was his self-loathing. _No! I will not let my body dominate me! I will not be weak! Never again!_ He threw his lust into a corner of his head and shackled it to the wall. He then tore mental bricks from the walls of his mind and started walling in the alcove. Putting each piece together with mortar made of a mix of pride and hatred, he buried his lust alive. After he was done he moved the bones of consciousness over the new wall so that it looked like it had never been disturbed.

He opened his eyes and the dawn blinded him briefly.

Months passed without incident and it was nearing the end of summer, within days of being the anniversary of his arrival at the area when he made a mistake. While he was in town he got into a heated fight with a large group of guards from a supply train that was bringing goods from the Silk Road inland to the swelling and gloated noblemen who demanded expensive sacrifices of wealth to sate their infernal lust. _Are they any less infernal then the ones buried alive inside me?_

He was able to kill all of the highwaymen and leave their bodies in varying stages of dismemberment but he had taken a crippling wound to the leg. It was a deep cut and as he began the long walk home it sent pains of sweet agony surging their way up his frame. He only managed to take small steps at a time, maintaining a death grip on the trees in order support the weight of his increasingly heavy body.

The sun was setting and he was still half a mile from his lean-to. Between, bouts of pain that caused him to crumple like the rag doll Blasa had given him because she felt she was too old to depend on a doll. "I hope it eases pain for you like it did for me" she had orated in a seemingly preordained speech. Heh, now it only reminded him of pain.

_AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! _A searing numbness throbbed through him. His knees folded neatly on their hinges and he collapsed to the ground. It was over. He knew he couldn't get back up again. It would be too painful.

That's when he saw something come over the next hillock. A person…. a girl…_BLASA! _He sighed; she had seen him and was coming closer. What was she doing here any way?

She gradually she slowed down from the dead sprint she had been in since she saw him. She wasn't winded in the least and looked like she could have done it for hours. "Are you okay?" she exclaimed punctuating her question by having her seductive eye-gleam turn to one that spoke of concern.

In his way of avoiding words when he deemed them unnecessary, he merely showed her the deep cut in his left leg. She gasped slightly, "Here I help carry you back to the shack". He shook his head and began to stand, but hot lava pulsed through his nerves when he began to put weight on the limb. He screamed a demonic roar that he would later become famous for. It seemed to encompass all the negative emotions in a human, pain, longing, hatred, desperation, and hopelessness; it was the shriek of a bat, the roar of a lion, and the howl of a wolf all bound together. It sliced its way through the forest for miles. Meandering through the forest to the ears of Blasa's too-pious father. _Demons in the wood, _the man thought with a certainty only blind faith could create.

The scream didn't seem to affect on Blasa who only showed the boy greater concern. She stopped and rested his left arm across her shoulder and held him no matter how he squirmed. Finally, too much in pain to fight for his pride, he conceded to her and let her support him back to the camp.

Once there, she set him on the ground, very lightly for fear of hurting the boy further. He rolled over to near where a fire was burning. _She must have used my flint-steel, and started it; _he felt pride tinge the recesses of his mind. He cleared away the thought when he heard a rip.

He shot his eyes over to Blaza who was ripping off the hem of her skirt in order to make long strips of cloth. He stared somewhat vacantly then realizing what she intended immediately evacuated his attention to the fire. He began sculpting images in the fire as soft fingers began to wrap torn skirt cloth around the wound. Had the setting sun not baptized the forest and the faces of the people there the two might have noticed that they were both blushing.

_Emotions, _he spat into his head, _gehfühle, эмоции. _He could feel them squirming with him. Like, worms moving through dark soil.

The sun was down; _doesn't Blasa's father get mad when she gets home late? _"Do you not need to return to you abode?" he asked in distracted way.

She sighed as she walked to the back alcove of his lean-to and grabbed some meat Luzifer had smoked one day in a fit of boredom. Well those were the ones that weren't burnt beyond recognition. " Well, I should but your too wounded I need to stay here and make sure you survive."

That comment had pricked his hubris, which began to twist inside him. It was normally an orb that just floated through him, but now it deigned it was time to take action. "I killed ten мужчины in urbs today, _tres de_ them after I received this sår." He was so angry he was completely unable to speak in a single language and his words were a slur of dialects.

"And what are you gonna do if more come?" she said, apparently she had been able to piece together what he said based on context. She sat down next to him, awkwardly close at that but he wasn't in the state of mind to notice.

"What are you gonna do? You can't fight," He snarled, with a slightly calmer mind then before. He even managed to say the both sentences in unbroken German.

She merely rested her head on his shoulder and stared into his eyes were hers. Her eyes had a gleam in them, that contradicted her serene face…was it impatience? While he was distracted she slipped her arm around him and put a knife to his throat. She cocked an eyebrow coyly.

* * *

He had never noticed her feelings much. In fact she felt it was…_what word does he use for low odds…oh yes, dubious…_she felt it was dubious that he even noticed them at all. But she had started to like his strange yellow eyes and wasn't bothered with his dead arm. Some nights he would tell her stories if she asked him nicely. They were about his travels. They were both glorious and grim, he didn't sugar coat the reality but she fell in love with the stories anyway. She looked up to him and watched Luzifer practice with his sword and decided one day to ask him to take her with him and travel the world.

Before she could do that she needed to get strong so she wouldn't be a burden. She knew Luzifer and was certain he would need to be convinced of her…_what's the word…_viability as a partner. So she stole a knife from her father and had been practicing with it before she went to see Luzifer every day and at night when she was supposed to be sleeping.

That is all to say that by now she was quite comfortable with holding it to Luzifer's throat.

* * *

However, one thing he had noticed, for while now, was that she was hiding a weapon up her sleeve. He might have been an emotional unperceptive but you couldn't sneak around him when it came to things inflicting bodily harm on other things. He merely smiled at her. There was more pride in it then mirth, and more arrogance in it then pride.

He pushed his arm away from his body bring her blade hand that was latched around it away from his exposed neck. He grabbed her wrist and whipped it slightly while applying pressure to the area between the bones. Her hand released the knife, which skimmed along the ground a few feet away. A technique he had applied on another girl more then a year ago.

"Not bad but not nearly good enough to beat me," he said holding that arrogant smile and staring into her wide eyes, "you may tarry here for however, long you please." He said as he lay down to go to sleep.

She stared into the space his head occupied until a moment before for a moment then lay down beside him. Their backs touched but Luzifer's lust remained silent in its prison.

It was late in the afternoon when Luzifer woke up. He was more refreshed then he had been in quite a while. He looked around and saw Blasa sitting by the remains of the fire twirling her knife over her wrist. Luzifer twisted his neck to crack of bones resetting and got up. Blasa heard and turned to him, "Are you alright Luzy?"

He nodded in his stilted silence. She just smiled at him. "I'm gonna go home to my family. My dad's going to be pissed as it is and I don't wont him to get even more angry." Luzifer let his head fall to his chest and then brought it up once again.

Blasa touched his cheek causing him to wince away in feigned pain before she dashed off. Luzifer just watched, picking up a large rock in his living arm. The commotion of the girls passing caused a rabbit to bolt across a small clearing in the woods. Luzifer whipped his right arm releasing the projectile. It skipped off the ground and hit the innocent animal square in the skull with a sickening crunch. Luzifer smiled at himself picking up his dinner.

He skinned and gutted the animal and started to cook it. When he was disemboweling the hapless creature the guts plopped out as one in a strange manner. He didn't notice and well he didn't for he was not familiar with telling the future from rabbit entrails but if he had been he would have known there was death in his future.

It was dark and he had almost finished cooking the rabbit when he heard noise in the woods. He looked up and out of the darkness burst Blasa, heaving labored breaths between convulsive sobs. Luzifer set the rabbit on the ground and slide around the fire to her side as she collapsed in front of the blaze. "He beat me Luzy," she screamed, grabbing his dead arm and pulling him dawn to he level. She was on her knees in the must pathetic manner. She pumped her heart through her eyes to his golden ones, "He said is was communing with Satan that I was going to bring ruination up the town. Luzy your not Satan right?"

He closed his eyes and touched her face, it was bruised. He put a slight amount of pressure on it so her gaze shifted to the fire. A devil appeared in it, made of wreathing threads. The devil looked evil then a flaming sword stabbed the devil and it died. Blasa tried to turn to look at Luzifer but he kept pressure on her cheek and she watched the fire. Forged in the flames was a gruff man, a reasonable facsimile of her father. The figured dissipated into small sparks that flew into the night.

The pressure on her face from Luzifer's hand dissipated and she turned to look into them. Deep in those yellow eyes was a glint. "_I have said all that I can"_ the glint said. Blasa buried her head in Luzy's chest and was wracked by sobs. But these sobs were happier then before. Luzy…dare she think it?…cared about her.

Luzfier was pained as she held him. Her remembered what had happened to the last woman who had cared about him. Memories of blood and a shattered skull danced mockingly. Tomorrow he would leave. She would work things out with father and return home. Once, that was over Luzifer would leave. If he staid any longer only bad things would come of it.

Pushing these thoughts out of his head he let his arms hold her until they were both asleep. A wing of light and one of darkness folded around them.

He woke up alone. As was his habit he sat up and moved his neck in a circle. Standing up he yelled out, "Blasa!" but she didn't respond. She must have gone home. He hoped she managed to work the problems out between her and her father.

Then an impulse hit him. It was time to leave. He couldn't trust himself around her anymore. He would one day murder her like he had done to his…

He grabbed the hatchet he had stolen along with a hunting knife he had also "acquired". He grabbed a stolen satchel and filled it with a blanket and his flint steel. That was it. He would travel light. It was back to foraging berries and banging bunny skulls with rocks. Finally, to punctuated his preparedness to go he pulled the strap to the scabbard on his back tight. No point in letting his sword sag during the long walk.

Luzifer began to take the first step when a voice hit him, hit him like a flail square to the groin. "Where are you going?" asked Blasa.

He turned, "I am taking my leave of this place. I will only bring you further anguish."

Blasa ran up to him, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. While he was still off balance she took his living hand and clasped it in bother of hers, "I can't go home now. Please take me with you. I won't be a burden."

Luzifer shook his head. "Why not? I'm strong. I can survive out their with you. Please, Luzy, I love you"

The last three words only strengthened Luzifer's resolve. "No"

She grip on his hand tightened, "Why, Luzifer? If you love me at all then please tell me why"

He tore his hand free and his words came faster and more fluently then they ever had, " Why? Because I'm a murderer. The last women who cared about me I killed. She was my _mother! _I cracked my mother's skull on the castle floor! I don't want that…I _won't _let that happen again. Not to another person I care about!" he was beginning to lose it. He had never had his feelings get the better of him like this and there seemed to be no reining them in.

She moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around him. "It's alright Luzifer. I know you didn't mean it. You are too much in grief to have done it in cold-blood and even if you did I know you won't hurt me."

He grew cognizant of how close to him she was. His lust was pound on the wall that bound it in a corner of Luzifer's mind. He pushed her away. He was twitching frantically. He was completely breaking down. The only part of his body that wasn't moving was his left arm, his dead arm. His emotion coursed through him. "NEVER AGAIN!" he shouted repeatedly changing his language with each utterance.

Seeing him so out of control, Blasa stepped in and put her hand on the back of his head and looked up into his wild, golden, eyes. His body went as dead as his left arm and he stared back at her. "It will be alright Luzy. I'm here." With that she stood up on her toes and pulled his head down so she could kiss him.

Luzifer was at an impasse. He had to push Blasa away from him but if he did his lust which was now shaking the foundations of the wall binding it would escape and he would loose control of his body. All the months of repression had only made his lust stronger.

He decided he would deal with his lust and then push Blasa away. She increased the force with which he kissed him and his body just stood there motionlessly, receiving it but no more.

Stepping up to the wall in his mind behind which he had interred his lust he waited briefly. Suddenly, two bricks flew out giving the opening he needed to attack. A sword appeared in his hand. It was the beast-blade that the knight who killed his father had wielding. It felt comfortable in his hands as he stabbed it through the slot in the bricks and piercing his lust's personification in every man's weak point. With drawing the sword he put the two bricks back in place. His lust went silent.

Snapping back into reality he pushed Blasa way and began stepping back. Now that he wasn't focused just on his lust all his other emotions started attacking him with increase fervor. He couldn't bear the, "Run away Blasa please!" He put his hand to his sword hoping that it would scare her off.

It didn't she began to step in to close the distance again.

Like many men who survived off of fighting he would often turn to his sword to bludgeon his argument into his foe. Only this was no bludgeoning motion. It was all edge.

It was supposed to have been a deterrent slash but he had felt it go through something. He looked up at her. She had a huge gash from her left shoulder to her right hip. He watched as blood pulsed out from the wound in time with her heartbeat, which, judging from the rapidity of the blood growth was beating fast.

She buckled and fell to the side he caught her in his one good hand He dipped his hand down till her hair was grazing the earth and his face was a foot above hers. Had anyone been spying on them at that moment he or she would have though that they were in the most passionate moment of the dance.

He stared into her glinting green eyes. The seductive spark was in them for a moment then faded.

Scared, he brought her close to him and let her head rest on his shoulder so she would breath on his neck causing her bloody chest to touch his bloodless one He didn't feel anything. _She's not breathing! It's happening again!_

He let her body fall to the ground. He collapsed to his knees. He let out, once again, his demon roar-shriek. It filled the forest for miles and miles. In all three towns the people stopped working in order to look at the forest as the scream went on for minutes upon minutes with out ending. They were entranced. For that brief time their joys were lost to the pain in the voice. It was intoxication and agonizing at the same time. Like the perfect drug.

His voice rasped after an hour of screaming. The spell on the people was broken and they retuned to their daily joys. However from that day on the forest was known as Dämon Wälder.

Luzifer look at his sword which was lying on the ground innocently, though covered with innocent blood. He punched it causing a slight crack to run through it, one that he would not notice until it was too late.

He picked up Blasa's corpse and walked it to a tree within sight of town and set it down. The people would find it and bury her. He gave her the Last Rights, which he had learned, since she was probably Christen even if he was less committed to religion.

Before he left though he grabbed the knife that she had practiced with, the one she had tried to hold to his throat. He slid it on his belt opposite four others he had stolen over the years. It rested over his right hip. He knew without his left hand it would be awkward to draw but he didn't plan to draw. It would just be another burden to bear.

Abelard watched as the form set his daughter down by the tree. Watched suspiciously as it gave her the Last Rights. _Probably Lucifer's Last Rights, _he scoffed at the demon that had stolen his daughter's soul. The demon looked to the town briefly and Abelard could see the boy-demons yellow eyes. They made him sick. Suddenly the demon vanished into the woods. Abelard took this opportunity and ran up to his dead daughter. He swore softly to himself that he would kill that demon.

He told his wife that night that a demon had taken their daughters soul. Even, if he was wrong on some details, he was, on the whole, precisely correct.

Luzifer watched the sun set in the woods. It looked down like the red, disapproving eye of god. Suddenly, as it began to pass below the horizon, looking more and more like it was staring angrily at him, it flashed green. _That's not the eye of god that is infuriated its…Blasa. _

He stood there briefly. Something stuck him mentally. _It has been exactly one year since I met Blasa._ He began to speak with a guilty voice that scratched on his aching throat, "One year down and I am no hero".

Luzifer began to walk away. The sun froze in its decent to stare at his retreating back. A cloud formed above the sun, forming a little stream that ran it's way upwards. Poor Luzifer, with his self-loathing, he never turned around to see the sun's cloud-tear. If he had he would have realized it wasn't angry; it was sad.

* * *

This is a hell of a long chapter. Fully twice as long as the first. For those who have read this far I have but one message for you. REVIEW. Only two of you apparently could do that. See its down in the bottom left corner. Now get chopping. 


	3. Of Souls and Shards

**Chapter 1**

**by Breaeden Swordwind **

Luzifer woke up the next day alone. There were no ashes from a night's fire near him nor were their crumbs from food. He hadn't had much of an appetite last night. He was also not near his lean-to, he had not felt the need to walk there and had just plopped himself down in a random location to go to sleep. He twisted his neck in a circle, and was greeted by the traditional snaps of bone.

Standing up, he continued stretching, not because he needed to but because he need time to muster up the courage to leave this forest. The forest, which had seen so much of his joys and pains. He sighed watching the still woods. He wondered to himself slightly, _Do places retain shards of memory even after the person who had perceived them is dead?_ He shook his head to get rid of his sedate thoughts.

All his supplies were still dangling from his back and Luzifer immediately began to walk out of forest. The sound of crunched leaves followed him as he slunk through the shadows that the leaves gave the forest floor at high noon.

Something tickled the back of his neck, his heckles rose. He spun his head from side to side but saw no one. His mind was in a sorry state. It was barely holding together under the constant strain of guilt and grief. His emotions were being sneakier then normal; they were prying his perceptions from beneath his notice.

He had been walking for only a modicum of time when, again, he felt that something was watching him. It cast eyes that cut through to his soul, touching with fetid pleasure the open sores that Luzifer's spirit boar. The trees were staring at him. He got dizzy. He hadn't felt like this since he first stepped out into open air from his home.

"Stop judging me!" he shouted, spittle spraying from his mouth. He twisted his sword out of its scabbard and struck it against the nearest tree. The crack in his sword widened but he didn't notice.

He shook his head. What was he thinking? Trees don't have eyes. He was letting his emotions take away his precious analytical consciousness. He turned his gaze inward.

Grief and Guilt were snickering at him openly and Sorrow was barely holding in a laugh. Luzifer grinned manically. He kicked Grief square in the face and punched Guilt with his good arm breaking Guilt's nose. "Do you bastards want to end up like Lust? He shouted putting to the bricked up alcove. All his emotions looked terrified. _That'll shut them up._

He came to his senses on his knees with his head in both hands and his sword on the ground. The crack faced the earth and Luzifer couldn't see it. Sheathing his sword a thought occurred to him. _How does one beat up ones own emotions? _Before it had merely been poetic license to say he fought his emotions but it was real now. The failings of the father, when it came to sanity, were being passed to son.

His logic was intact. His ability to reason was the same but his emotions… He had always hated them but now they were being concentrated into little devils. He must be taking Blasa's death harder then he thought. He needed time to get over it.Sitting down on the carpet of leaves, he sighed and tried to regain his sanity.

He cleared his mind and sat for what must have been an hour, judging from the position of sun when a noise broke his concentration. He felt calm and clear. Before he opened his eyes, the tiny red orbs that were dancing around him disappeared lest the "boy" see them. They knew fool well that the humans coming over the ridge now would not be able to see them but they, also, knew, only too well, thanks to what had happened to Camal, that the "boy" could see them.

The sound he had heard was the sound of a large body of men moving through the forest as silently as they could, which is to say that they were making an obnoxious ruckus. He let his breath escape him and opened his eyes. He saw a gleam begin to come up from the other side of the ridge. The gleam was from the helmet of the leader of a group of armored peasants.

Luzifer could tell they were peasants because of the sorry state of their armor- peasants never had the time necessary for proper maintenance- and because they thoroughly looked like they had no idea how to use the spears and axes they were carrying- peasants never had the time necessary for proper practice.

Luzifer had to stand up before the leader of the "warriors" noticed him. When the man did he stopped dead and the fools behind him all rammed into him, causing the "  
"leader" to stagger. _Pathetic._

"Who goes there?" the leader shouted, or more accurately shrieked, the bastard was terrified.

"No one deserving of introduction," Luzifer said in a distracted, yet condescending tone. He began to walk up the hill toward them. Their weakness annoyed him, maybe they would let him pass and they could go back to their bumbling.

"Why are you here boy? This here's a haunted wood. We heard a demon howling in here the other day." A weakling behind the leader said pointing his spear at Luzifer. Luzifer didn't respond at first, he just kept walking past them.

When he was past the militia by three strides, he stop and scoffed over his shoulder, hardly thinking about what he was saying, "Don't waste your time. That демон is far stronger then you are." He then went back to putting as much distance as he could between the fools and himself.

They just stared blankly at him, he suddenly realized why they were confused, "demon is stronger than you" he yelled back at them.

During that entire conversation, if you could call it that, he had been distracted. Those emotions of his were gone. Completely. He wondered whether it was his meditation that had done it or if something odd had happened.

Luzifer, however, had not heard the arrogance in his own voice.

The men behind were awe struck. The boy must have tried fighting the demon and been wounded because their was blood all over the front of his shirt. They didn't know it was the blood of a girl.

Luzifer knew about the blood that had stained his blue shirt and turned it a disgusting purple and decided he would slink into town and buy some new cloths. Yes, he would buy these because he knew it would be tougher to steal the clothing he was going to have made for him.

Luzifer entered town and hatched a plan for obtaining the money. He took up a station outside an inn in town where merchants and trader often stopped on their way through town. He leaned against the tavern wall, next to the doorframe and, after putting on an impatient and intolerant face, had all the look of a bouncer. He waited patiently for an hour before a mark appeared. Luzifer touched his sleeve in a seemingly involuntary motion. The merchant was covered in tassels and ribbons, looking very Flemish. He also had pouches of gold

* * *

The merchant began to walk up to the door and a bouncer, an awfully young one at that (_oh well he looks menacing enough with the blood on his shirt)_ opened the door for him. The boy made a formal back-and-forth motion with his hand and seemed very submissive. _Finally, a peasant who knows his place is to hold the door for the successful. _He performed his one-nostril sniff that he did around those of lower station and later would remember the boy's yellow eyes. _Didn't some thief-girl tell me about a boy with yellow eyes? Ah yes, it was that she-devil who cut me!_

Luzifer almost snickered. The fool hadn't noticed that the knife had slipped out of his sleeve as he had made his formal gesture. Hadn't noticed the knife had slit the rope holding the pouch causing it to fall right into Luzifer's hand on the next pass.

* * *

His financial difficulties having been solved with a little dexterity, he turned his attention to getting his new cloths. As he moved through the bustling trade town, to the irritating sound of hawkers, people stared at him in the most obtrusive manner. So what if he was cover with the blood of an innocent girl he had murdered in cold-blood? As if they were any better.

Luzifer moved past the gawkers and the hawkers into the shop of a tailor. The place was filled with cloths of all kinds that showed off her skill and devoid of people, which showed off how little her skill was appreciated. A young woman was sleeping at the counter. You might have said business wasn't booming for her.

The girl started when she heard the door open and nearly fell over when she saw all the blood on Luzifer. "Are you alright, sir?" she said walking from behind the counter. The intruding boy merely nodded.

Readjusting herself and putting on her most saleswomanly face she smiled at him, "Is their something I can get you?" The boy nodded curtly. She waited for him to continue but he seemed to already be looking through her stores selection. _Young people today,_ she thought to herself with all the superciliousness of a woman five entire years older then the boy standing opposite her.

She was shaken from her pre-mature maturity when the mute began to speak. "I need a sling for my arm." He said only half paying attention to her.

She sighed. _At least he can speak. _"Will you also need cloths to replace your stained ones?" he nodded again, this time turning to face her She noticed his eyes and face. _How handsome, _she thought idly. She began speaking, and a very immature, slightly infatuated, sound could be heard in her voice, "Then I will need to measure you."

The tone of voice and slight redness that began to appear in her cheeks was lost on Luzifer. Living alone most of one's life had made him very negligent of the subtleties of the human voice and face.

The measuring process was a rather annoying and tedious affair. She took a piece of rope with periodic markings attached to it and pressed it against several of his appendages and his torso. After it was over she said to him in a thoughtful voice, "I'll get to work on this right away and I'll have it done by tomorrow." He nodded. She told him the cost and he paid.

Luzifer began to make his move toward the door when he was halted by the women's voice of his shoulder, "Why don't you stay here for the night? You shouldn't walk around in those bloody clothes anyway. Call the cost of staying her part of the cost of the cloths."

Luzifer stood there a second with the door ajar, letting in a cool, sobering breeze. He could feel a twitching in his head, a slight instability at the whims of fate, which had deigned to send him from a girl he had…cared about and murdered to another girl who was offering him a room. No. He couldn't let himself get close to a woman, never again. He only ended up killing them. He was born to wander from place to place never finding a home except in his sword arm and his books. "No thanks. I have walked around in worse." He moaned and, before she could respond, slipped into the cold and gold autumn sun.

The wind was a gnawing cold that bit into his soul. It was refreshing to feel the burns and scars that recent events had place upon his mind feel the salve of the cold northern winds. It was said that Zephyr, the west wind, brought healing, but for Luzifer it was Boreas, the north wind. The wind blew through him carrying away his pains, at least for a little while. His feeling always came back like a loyal dog. A loyal dog he wanted to kill.

His arms were spread like he was being crucified upon the gusts of air and the townspeople were beginning to stare at the bloody breeze-aficionado in there midst. He sighed in a half-depressive half-hopeful manner. People sure knew how to ruin a fleeting panacea.

Luzifer had a lot of time to burn and noticing a bookstore came to the realization that he had depleted his reading material and would have to procure more. The store was built into the basement of a one-floor house and Luzifer descended the stairs into the relative heat of Gaia's bosom.

Opening the door Luzifer looked in upon shelves upon shelves of books, which formed a waist high labyrinth that the boy found difficult to navigated. From behind a stack of books skittered an impish, hoary, and decidedly short old man. He seemed to be in a constant state of hyperactivity, buzzing around, being distracted by the slightest thing. The man looked at the intruder in his domain with a strange grin, "What have we here? It's not often that I get warriors in here." He said in German that sped through the air like droplets of a waterfall to their homes in the lake. He suddenly started scurrying over to Luzifer, "Watch your sword! You almost knocked over that stack of books."

Luzifer bowed his head in apology. The man accepted it and kept talking as Luzifer began to comb through his inventory, "Yes warriors are indeed truly rare customers for me. They spend most of their time lusting after women and swords. No offense intended." The man added as Luzifer gave him a brief glare over his shoulder. The man noticed that Luzifer had already taken out three books from the shelves and decided to change his subject before he said something to anger his customer, "You seem to be quite the scholar. Is it that warriors are incredibly stupid or incredibly smart with nothing in between? Because the last person who to took such an insatiable interest in my…love-nest of the literati was a warrior-women. She was something. White hair hanging over her eyes, constantly barking at me about 'transmution this' or 'nigredo that'. A true… alchemical anarchy. She bought about twenty of my books so I guess I can't complain too much." Luzifer walked out of the maze of books and indicated that he was ready to pay. "Speaking of purchases, is there a rhyme or reason to your choices as the four books you chose seem to have no correlation."

Luzifer was looking at the limits that the world had set on him and spoke in a distracted stoic manner, "They're the only ones I haven't read."

Stepping out into the still early afternoon, with his satchel bulging with sharp corners, Luzifer pondered what he would do. He began to wander aimlessly through the streets, carelessly deflecting off travelers as he buried his gaze into the ground. After he had been wandering for the majority of an hour, he decided this was as good a time as any to look up. _Laden der Neugier _was written in flowing script. He felt something odd exuding from the curiosity shop. A sort of kindred spirit that understood him all to well. A single eye with a blazing iris.

Luzifer gripped his forehead in pain as he absent-mindedly pushed through the door. There were a few people quizzically staring at various items, a mask from Cathay here and an odd beaded necklace from the Araby there. None of it seemed to be of any interest to anyone, much less a traveling swordsmen, but there was something tugging at him. He eventually came to a counter were the shop owner a miserly man who looked much older then he was watched the customers like a hawk, or maybe a vulture.

The boy's presence interrupted the merchant's revelries of falling coins and the man asked him, with no lack of impatience if he wanted anything. Luzifer stood there for a couple seconds trying to think of a question to ask. _Yeah, do you happen to possess an item that displays a marked tendency to have a magnetic affect upon murderers? Heh…_ "Do you have anything particular of interest to those of a scholarly mindset?"

The man gave the question some thought and then pulled a box out from under the counter. The box was an approximate cube, maybe a bit wider then it was long or tall, of a dark stained wood, and had on the front a large and intimidating lock. It was approximately the size of a man's head. The vendor pulled a key from inside his shirt and inserted it to the clean, dark-steel padlock. He could her the mechanism catch and the man opened to box revealing…a shard. It was mostly red and seemed to be of steel in most parts but in another it was flesh. The similarities between that shard and the weapon used by the knight who had destroyed his prison were startling. This was mostly ignored upon the revelation that this was what had been calling to the Luzifer.

The feeling of malice that exuded from it wafted into Luzifer's brain clouding his mind and sending him into a euphoric stupor. He thought that the merchant was talking but Luzifer was flitting upon the tide that the shard sent ebbing through him. The twisted pleasure that it churned within him. He felt stronger and smarter near the shard and he came to the decision he must have it. Later…for now he was drifting in the ecstasy of the moment.

The box closed and the locked was set back into place snapping Luzifer out of his revelries. "…a pretty fascinating peace of material if I do say so myself. I heard a rumor it is part of Soul Edge. What that is I haven't the slightest." The merchant said as Luzifer came back to reality.

From Luzifer two words could be heard undercut by need and lust, "How much?"

The merchant said, with a smile and false friendship, the cost.

Luzifer was walking to an inn, one different from the tavern he had pick-pocketed the penny royalty in front of. He had a plan and was laughing.

* * *

The thief walked on the streets of the town she had taken up residence in and was bored out of her mind. She now had enough money for the next few days of living if she spent it right but it still could not hold a candle to the sums of money she had back in the prime of her thieving days. She remembered the idyllic days of robbing merchants on the roadside, sleeping under the stars with her not-so-loyal band of rogues and murders, and saving her money so that one day she could buy her way into the nobility and be freed from the shackles of the peasantry. As she sat down on a rock near the edge of town she gave a sigh. Such days of joy cannot last and she could remember that early morning when it all collapsed.

There was nothing foreboding in the singing rays of the sun or in the light-hearted choruses of the birds, not like in stories where it was always at night or in the rain that such tragedies occurred. She led her group of men to their usual stomping grounds and they set up an ambush on both sides of the road. She walked onto the road to find a sucker to lead into the baited trap. When she saw someone coming over the horizon she signaled for the bandits to be ready as she began to run to the person in a split skirt and leather tunic that had a v down the middle which she had removed the strings from as part of her duties as the band's siren.

She came up to the boy who hardly reacted to her with more then a glance of the eye and kept walking, "Would you help me" she had said, "I need help reaching my home which seems to be in the direction you are traveling. I don't feel safe with out someone strong near by". She almost barfed every time she said that she hated acting weak for some guy but she new the pay-off would be worth it.

His golden glare turned her soul to ash, "Stop feigning meekness I can see the knife in the hem of your skirt." She hadn't expected this and if her men attacked someone with as much competence as this boy demonstrated one of them might get killed. Best thing to do was to try and distract him. She hated doing this; it made her feel a whore.

She caught up to him and matched her pace with him as she grabbed his left arm with her right. I felt cool to the touch and it didn't react to her fingers. "I'm sorry but would you mind if I accompanied you to town. Maybe we could grab a room at the inn and…" she left him to finish the sentence. His eyes again moved to her and they threw balefire at her.

"Don't be so low." He said but before she could respond they arrived at the ambush point, "excuse me." He said as he pulled himself away from her without moving his left arm. "Come out, mortals! I know your there!"

The bandits attacked without surprise but en masse but they never stood a chance. He rode the updrafts of the tumult like an eagle rides the thermals of the sky. Gliding through slashes while using his sword whenever a killing blow could be struck. When he fought one-on-one against someone he used speed and his weapon length to his advantage, he jumped in and out of range staying in a constant state of motion, never loosing his precious momentum.

When the last male corpse hit the ground he sheathed his sword and looked at her over his shoulder, "I imagine you were trying to lead me into that ambush". He began to approach her. She snatched her dagger from her skirt and pointed it at him. He sighed. Before she knew what was happening he had grabbed her wrist, applied pressure, and whipped the weapon out of her hand. "Don't worry. I do not kill women…intentionally," he said that last part with a heavy tortured sigh. She tried to back away but only succeeded in falling on her rump.

The son of a sword offered her his hand and she accepted it. "Just please do me a favor and don't act weak." He said in distracted and lecturing voice, "You should always be strong no matter what." His had was on her shoulder because her knees had suddenly decided that they weren't up to their normal status quo and would prefer to leave her once again on her butt. She looked into his eyes and became very secure but terrified at the same time. _And he who shall open the way to hell shall have the eyes of storms. _A random sermon from the priest she had slept to as a child intruded on her thoughts. _I was conscious during one of his sermons_? Returning to wear she was she began to feel the need to lean on him and rest but once she had been standing for a moment he let go of her and began to walk away. He stopped and spoke into the wind, letting the breeze do the work of carrying his words to her, "Don't ever do what you did to me right before the ambush. If somebody asks you for something like that you have my permission to lacerate him."

She had stood stunned for half an hour when a merchant came up to talk to her. She let him take her to the nearest town after she had grabbed her knife. The ride was annoying thanks to his tendency to sniff through one nostril and to speak down to her and everyone else. He had even made a pass at her when she was leaving and she had exercised the right the boy had given her. At least five times… on the lecher's face.

It was the boy who had stuck out most in the story. He was probably four years her junior but he seemed aged and enlightened. Half of her hated the kid's guts for killing all her men and leaving her high and dry but the rest of her…

Either way, she needed to see him again. He had triggered emotions in her too strong to be left to their own devices. Maybe she should just leave now and find him. She had nothing to tie her down. No possessions. And she had just stolen a tidy sum of money to sponsor the trip.

She would find that yellowed eyed boy and figure out what she felt towards him.

* * *

Luzifer stood outside the store in his new clothes. Among them was a loose-fitting red tunic with some tough leather on the right shoulder. _"You look like a warrior" she had said, "You would need such things." _His pants were loose as well and were black with yellow flames winding their way up from the feet. _"heh, I thought you would look good in them." _His sling was also black, his dead left arm gently swaying in its grip, and he had a red cloth headband around his temples. _"Your hair needs something to hold it back and this contrasted well with your eyes." _The tailor had been a strange girl.

A wealthy and suitably pompous man walked into the curiosity shop. Luzifer immediately shadowed him. The wealth man immediately struck up a distracting argument with the merchant who was drawn away from the counter. This gave Luzifer the opportunity he needed. He reached behind the counter and grabbed the box that held the shard and began to walk out. He was behind stand when the merchant glanced at him. He knew the man couldn't see what was in his hand so he just nodded amiably as possible. The man was then distracted by the rich ones argument on how some such item was a fake Arabic sword.

Luzifer ducked out of the store and ran.

When he was alone in the woods he got out the hatchet he had stolen almost a year ago to cut would and began to hack into the dark wooden box. As the need for the item it contained began to intensify the power and ferocity of his strikes also began to increase. Finally at long last the top broke inward and he was able to retrieve the shard.

It felt euphoric, euphorisch, эйфористический, eufórico. It was a consuming dead-end feeling, one he knew would lead him nowhere but he didn't care. The sheer act of having the senses tingled by it was enough. It made him feel a bit more complete, like he had found a missing piece of himself. It was a kin in consciousness. It was a like-minded entity. Yes it was a thinking thing as much as him. The feelings the shard had intermeshed with his. He might have stood there for days had his self-loathing not been there to stop him.

_Stop!_ He tossed the shard to the ground. _I'm evil! I murder those I love! If this shares a similar consciousness with me it must be evil as well. I must destroy it! The world cannot bear two murderers the scale of me. _The shard quaked in terror on the ground without making a motion. Hadn't he heard this was part of something called Soul Edge? Did that mean the weapon the nightmare that had attacked his castle had used was Soul Edge? At the very least this demanded further research. If Soul Edge proved to be as much an abomination as Luzifer was then…well that would be decided when the time came. He picked up the shard and began to ponder what to do with it. It was still trying futilely to bribe him with pleasure but he had resisted such things before. He clutched it hard into his hand, almost with the force to break the shard, when he felt it sink into his hand. He opened his palm and stared into the wrinkles and lines on it with wide eyes. He felt his left hand twitched and his eyes grew even more.

* * *

Abelard entered the tavern in town and began to canvas it for people who had seen a yellow-eyed demon. None had but he still had a lot of the bar to ask. This was taking to long so he pulled a stool up as he adjusted the two-handed axe on his back. Once he was taller then the surrounding people he yelled out with a determined voice the silenced the merriment that was taking place, "Has anyone seen a yellow-eyed demon-boy".

A rather rich looking man in a corner opened his mouth in response, after he had sniffed through one of his nostrils, " I don't know about a demon but there was a boy here with yellow eyes. He stole some money from me and I haven't seen him since."

_Good, _thought Abelard. Soon vengeance would be his.

But the events in the bar were not completely over. At one table a man with a tankard said in a drunken drawl, "I hear rumors that every baby born is dead even before it leaves it's the mothers womb. I think the end times are upon us. The antichrist will soon release the legions of hell upon us."

Another man at the table nodded, " You want to know who da antichrist is? It's one of those goddamn Lutherans. Trying to escape from the light of the Mother Church."

A farmer nearby took offense at that comment and pushed the man's seat out from under him, "No, you bloody fool. It's the pope. Selling out good in order to furnish their pulpits. They are the true deceivers."

A large brawl broke out and each man took a side and started randomly swing punches at anybody within arms reach, friend or foe. The entire tavern was eventually destroyed in the chaos and fifteen men were killed, including the two instigators of the violence.

Both of those men took to their graves opinions that were wrong on so many levels.

* * *

Not much to say except to review, comments and critism encouraged.  



	4. Duels of the Past and Present

**Chapter 2**

**By Breaeden Swordwind**

Luzifer entered the empty castle with the slightest tinge of trepidation. The castle and the sky were painted in a million shades of dull gray and there was the slightest tinkling sound of a stream that ran through the castle. A feint dusty smell hung in the air and on the wind. Nothing moved in it and he was alone. Alone, he knew, except for three eyes that were watching him.

A small piece of mortar fell loose from a nearby wall and crashed its way downward in the silence. The noise it gave off echoed through the hollow recesses of the stone hive. Luzifer tore through the castle in ground-eating but silent strides.

He had been following the trail of the one known as the "Azure Knight", the one who popular opinion had labeled as the bearer of the sword known as Soul Edge. Luzifer and moved quickly and had been gaining ground on the warrior, following the rumors of the massacres the man took part in. He had followed the trail of blood to this castle and it seemed a battle was waiting inside for him.

His path brought him to a set of stairs, which he ascended into a bright light. The sun was rising and it rays shone directly into the corridor Luzifer was moving through and for a brief second he was blinded. After he had adjusted to the glare he moved out of the stairway and outside. He found himself at the top of the high castle wall looking down into a courtyard that had been scorched of grass. Sitting silently in the ashes was a lone armored warrior. A warrior with a disgustingly muscled right arm.

The armor of the swordsman was of the color which his nickname claimed it to be and the designs that the plate armor had…contorted itself into could only be described as evil. The helmet had a large, straight horn coming out of the forehead and a crest the flowed down the back of his head like a steel horse mane. Parts of the chest and the entire arm was overlapped by the disfigured muscle and jutting teeth of the abominable growth on the appendage.

The blade the man held at his side had an eye imbedded in the middle of it, which shifted its gaze onto Luzifer, and the boy knew he had been spotted.

It was odd. Luzifer supposed this would be the moment he was supposed jump down from the rampart in a fury of bloodlust toward the one who had killed his father, or that he was supposed to find new interest in the road behind him when he discovered his reasons for being here weren't quite as strong a case as he might imagine. Luzifer, however, felt none of these things. It was more that his body felt a primal recognition to the man inside the armor. It was that feeling that passed between to people of similar blood who had no knowledge the other possessed a relation to them and just seemed to hold their gaze with the other person a few seconds longer.

Luzifer felt, as well, a intense obligation to free the person who the sword held kidnapped, though his better sense told him that swords didn't hold men hostage. He drew his sword and faced the man on the ground and behind Luzifer could be seen a light over his left shoulder and darkness over his right.

* * *

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his human mind Siegfried sighed with guilt, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do to stop the impending conflict as Soul Edge still had complete control of his body. The boy leapt down from the rampart and landed in a crouch. He drew his sword with his right hand, his left hand dangling from a sling, and kept his low crouch like a waiting serpent. _Hehe…another foolish soul…and a strong one at that, _Nightmare gloated into Siegfried's thoughts.

Somehow, both the demon and the man inside it were apprehensive. For some reason they had expected someone else to appear and face them. Someone who was older, with more blond in his hair, and a rapier. It was as if the threads of history had diverged and they were on the wrong path. Nightmare shook its head and reset itself into its fighting stance. Prepared to fight its former master.

The boy had the look of a warrior about him and not in the same way as having a sword and the ability to swing it. He had that stoic look that had been hit hard by life's right hook several times and would again. The look that said he would take the hit and reply with one of his own no matter how much it hurt.

From the closer distance Siegfried felt a vague and ephemeral recognition for the swordsman's face. A memory flashed in his mind and it did not seem his own.

* * *

"Hey Gladifer! Wait up!" said the young boy behind him. "Where are you going in such a hurry, Glad? There isn't a whole lot for us to do until man is made and His plan is still only in phase four."

Gladifer smiled slightly at his lean brother who, though appearing to be several years younger, was actually his twin. The younger wore his hair a bit shorter and darker and had a different color eyes but they were twins; even more so then the lower orders where someone might look the exact same as someone else. Of course there was also the mutation, but Gladifer didn't like to think about that. "I just wanted to talk to the other Cherubim. They don't seem to want to give us a straight answer on why only they can talk to Him."

Both of them though bore a large, two-handed sword on their backs. The swords seemed normal except that they were specifically tuned to their wielders and they could absorb intense emotions.

"Yeah I don't trust those bastards," his brother said emphatically. His brother had no love for all the others who made fun of his mutation. They called him the 'corrupted' and 'noctifer'. The constant mocking of the others and caused Gladifer's brother to become more and more arrogant towards the mainstream. He even sometimes got into fights with Michael and Gabriel, the two he detested the most. He won his fights, though, because he was supposed to be the strongest of His servants.

"heh… you don't trust anyone. If I didn't know better I'd say you didn't trust Him." Said Gladifer with a grin as they began to head to the Temple-Mount.

The silence he received in response was worrisome. It was a foreboding silence that both shared in. In the silence their futures became set in stone. By the end of the path both would be dead.

* * *

Siegfried had no idea where that memory had come from but all the same he began tearing at Nightmare within the confines of his own mind. It was futile the sword had full control and there was little for Siegfried to do but pull together his strength and wait for a better opportunity.

Soul Edge lightly twirled itself in Nightmares armored hand. " Come mortal and donate your soul to the ultimate power." The boy seemed cautious and for some reason held his weapon in only one hand. Suddenly, in a burst of speed, the boy began to move. He was circling around Nightmare and staying out of slashing range. The demon waited patiently for his opponent to make his move. A move was indeed mad and, as the boy leap through the air, the battle began.

* * *

The fight had been going on for a few minutes when Luzifer jumped out his opponents attack range with a sword that was broken down the middle. _There must have been a damn crack in it! _The break was at an angle and so at one of the edges was a sharp point. He began to ponder his alternatives.

He had been fighting as usual, using foot speed and weapon reach to try and create opening for a slow but strong killing blow. Now he jumped back with a sword that had shattered, half way up the blade, in his hand. _Shoddy piece of mierda! _The blade had shatter diagonally up the blade so that there was a sharp point that could still be used for stabbing and there was some edge left.

All he had to show for the broken blade was a small dent in his opponent's armor. The bastard played a defensive game and kept him back with sweeping horizontals that Luzifer had to struggle just to avoid. The warrior's weapon was interfering with his normal hit-and-run attacks and making hard to keep his distance properly. The blows that Luzifer had snuck in had just grazed of his armor and just a second ago his opponent's parry had completely broken his blade.

He needed a new plan of attack. He stepped out of the demon-man's reach and the creature just stood there patiently, it new that it would not be able to keep up with its much faster opponent. Something about the first time he had encountered the knight. His memories flew through his mind. Individual moments faded with age: His father was on the floor in two very different locations; _He could feel the bits of soot he was running through hit his exposed skin; His right hand impacted the eye which was disgustingly soft yet oddly resilient; The creature on the other side of door screamed in pain withdrawing the blade and slamming it massive form against the gate_…Luzifer grinned in his maniacal way that showed too many teeth.

Phase one. Luzifer advanced. As he had hoped, the knight launched a high horizontal but Luzifer slid under it. Luzifer came up and smashed the warrior on the side of the face with his broken sword. He managed to get a few more strikes against his opponent's head before his foe pushed him back with a sharp kick. The warrior howled with rage as he tried to get his bearings. Luzifer sharpened his focus.

Luzifer made another move inward and this time his opponent lifted his sword over his head as fire engulfed the blade. It was well known that Soul Edge could summon the fires of Hell at will. The blade came down but Luzifer had anticipated a vertical reaction to the failure of the high horizontal. He easily sidestepped the strike and the blade was imbedded in the ground. The small bits of fire began to move away. Soul Edge had no control over fire after it had been summoned. Unfortunately for it, Luzifer did. The fires wrapped around Luzifer's broken sword as he drove the point into the beast-blade's eye.

The warrior reverberated with pain and pulled the sword away. He used the sword as a prop to lean against and seemed to be having trouble with some fragment of his own mind. Luzifer made the most of this opportunity and attacked the eye repeatedly. Finally the abomination in armor dropped the weapon. The beast's hair began to change colors and the demonic arm began to diminish.

* * *

_This is my body! _Siegfried regained control of his sanity and found a blue, sword in his hands. It had a tapering hilt and a curve where the cross guards should be that enclosed an orb. On the outer edge of the curve was what looked like some sort of fish fin and the blade was wide and had the appearance of ice.

Siegfried felt an ancient affinity for the blade and he felt like he had used it for millennia. It had a consciousness and a presence similar to his. It was like finding the other half of oneself.

He felt an impulse to drive it into the cursed sword at his feet but first he needed to fend of his opponent who was resetting himself in his stance. Siegfried brought the blade in a downward slice but the boy stepped backwards and avoided it. Only not quite. There was a slight cut running down the left side of his face and over his eye. The younger man grabbed his face with one hand and collapsed to his knees.

This was the opportunity Siegfried needed; he drove the sword in his hand into the eye of Soul Edge, which was just now reforming after being sliced by the boy's sword. Siegfried could feel the energy drain from the weapon and from Soul Edge as well. Both sealed away the other's power and soon both became mere chucks of stone with no more power that rocks from a limestone quarry.

Siegfried felt a weight lift from his shoulders and he could feel the sun begin to shift. He could finally feel the sickening feeling his armor exuded. The corruption that had come with the slaughter of countless innocents. He tossed of the helmet and began to stand. That's when he heard the screaming.

The boy was writhing on the ground screaming in endless peels of anguish. His face was emitting a slight wisp of steam and when Siegfried could see that the area near the cut was boiling. He grabbed the boy, the boy who had helped free him from the control of Nightmare and Soul Edge, and dragged him to the nearest source of water, a fountain in front of a church.

Siegfried splashed some water on the boys face hoping against hope it would help but then the water began to steam as it touched the boy's face and the screams redoubled. The wounded adolescent pushed away from Siegfried and ran down to the river that wound its way through the castle. He dipped his face in it. The pain must have eased as he pulled his head up and stopped screaming, silently lying back against the riverbank.

Siegfried was both curious and disturbed. _Why would church water do that to the boy? _He walked to the river, which was flowing slowly toward its outlet in the Baltic Sea several miles away giving that calm rolling sound that one can only here from rivers when it is perfectly silent. He looked at the boy's face, which looked normal except for the blood coming from the slice that still remained above the left eye. That's when the boy opened his yellow eyes.

* * *

The pain was gone, thankfully. Luzifer had never known such agony, even when his arm had been trapped underneath the burning support beam, it had never even approached the agony that occurred when that unholy water had been splashed on his face. It was gone now but the memory would last a lifetime.

His eyes were closed and he let the flowing of the river calm his heart and slowly began to open his eyes. He saw the face of a man he recognized. His mind reeled as something was dragged from the attic of his conscious mind.

* * *

He ran down the hallways and appeared on a balcony overlooking the central square filled with Seraphim, Thrones, and Dominions. Set up in the center was a scaffold and upon it was a large chopping block. His brother was blindfolded and two angels looked up to Luzifer (was that still my name?). One was holding his brothers sword in his hand and the other turned to address Luzifer. Both had large white fires coming from their backs that wrapped around them like folded wings. "Well, if 'noctifer' didn't decide to witness his brother's execution I don't know where we would be." The man said, a smile appearing from behind long brown hair that dangled around his head.

"You bastard, Gabriel, on what grounds dare you execute my brother." Even Luzifer could feel the hatred dripping from his voice and his left hand was closed and tense.

"On what grounds? Why, only on treachery, you failed creation." Said Gabriel with an evil grin, " He dared to question the law of the Cherubim and you would be wise to heed his example." Gabriel motioned to Micheal who raised the blade over his head. Luzifer's brother was forced to kneel on the block, his neck exposed to the blade.

"You wouldn't dare you bastards!" Luzifer shouted over the din of the anticipating crowd. "I am stronger than you and you know it! I am the Light Bearer and His Chosen! You won't dare kill my brother!" His arrogance flared within him and he would not let it die out. He needed courage, but there was not enough, so he relied on arrogance to make up the difference.

"Tch…look around you! Look at the angels around you! They are Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, and Dominions. Do you think you have a chance?" Gabriel shouted at him. Luzifer staggered back as he devoted hit first real glance to the crowd in front of him. This wasn't a crowd; this was a throng. There were more here then he thought existed. Even Luzifer's arrogance snuffed out before their numbers. Gabriel took the Light Bearer's step back to be submission. He let his hand drop.

Michael dropped Gladifer's sword onto the prisoner's neck. As soon as Gladifer's head left his shoulders the body disappeared but the blood stayed on the sword. The sword absorbed the martyr's blood and began to change. It was turning an ice blue when it disappeared.

"I'll kill you! I'll kill you all! Everyone from the souls of the Platonist Origen to the Cherubim on the Temple-Mount, everyone of you is as good as dead!" Luzifer shouted above the cheers of the crowd. Fires began to form around, dance over, and jump from him.

Gabriel, with a motion of his hand, silenced to undulating crowd. "This death is warranted by the directives laid down by Him. To go against this decision is to go against Him. Are you truly willing to do that to the One who brought you into existence. Or will you show us just how corrupted you are, Noctifer." Gabriel said the last sentence with a smug tone in his voice and an arrogant spring in his walk.

"You will die! I will tear off your wings and teach you the true meaning of pain. Know this! If my brother's murder is warranted by Him then I SHALL NOT SERVE!" As Luzifer said the last four words he could feel his eye change color to the hue, which would come to identify all "fallen". "I will never serve a murderer! My vengeance will come and you will all be laid to waste by it."

Luzifer let his fires follow him as he turned back to the alabaster hall behind him. He dragged his sword against the wall to his right and his claws against the wall to his left, leaving gaping crevices in the pure white marble. _Claws? When did I get claws?_ But his body wasn't the only thing changing, he could feel his sword absorbing his newfound malice and turning into a flesh-bound abomination.He didn't care at the moment though. He let fire spring off him and fill the hallway behind him. Blackening the walls and eating the tapestries. Luzifer laughed. Soon the whole universe would know this burning. And he had a plan to do it.

As he walked out of the hallway into the endless city of the Platonist Origen he saw two Dominions guarding his exit. He sighed slightly as they set into fighting stances. His sword glowed as he put energy into it. Two small beams of light came off and struck the Dominions who fell down dead. "Pathetic fools!" He turned to his flames, which were now coming out of the hall behind him. "Burn what you will but kill no one. As for me, I have an army to raise." And as he said that he smiled.

* * *

The entire memory passed in a moment and the man was offering a hand to help him get up. Luzifer brushed it off and stood up on his own. He could feel blood working its way down from the cut and he licked it as it grazed the corner of his mouth. The other man was taking off his plate armor with an expression of disgust, "Damn this armor to hell!" A gauntlet he had taken off hit the ground and stepped on it repeatedly until it badly misshapen.

Luzifer would have asked to have the armor if the man- well, young man, he looked only a few years older than himself- didn't want it but he had a feeling that the knight wouldn't have given it too him if he asked.

The armor destroying continued until all of the armor had been stomped into shapeless hunks of finely hammered steel. It was then that the man turned to him. The formerly-armor knight had blonde hair, which was grown long and straight, and angelic green eyes. He had a scar running over his left eye and he had a dark, melancholy innocence about him that seemed out of place. They looked out of the corner of their eye at each other, both waiting for the other to speak. Eventually, though, the other realized that Luzifer was not going to speak.

"Who are you?" the man said. His voice was burdened and tired.

Luzifer was silent for a moment, over the past few months he had been developing a habit of waiting a moment before he spoke, it helped to keep him speaking in a single language and not mixing others in accidentally. The man had spoken to him in German and seemed to have no difficulty with the pronunciation. Luzifer assumed it was his mother tongue and phrased his response in German as well, "I have no name. But there was one who called my Luzifer."

The other was taken severely aback and gripped his head. It seemed to Luzifer that the man had some sort of internal argument with himself and wondered how the name Blasa had given him factored in to that. _Blasa…I'm sorry._ He shook his head to push away the depressive thoughts.

The blonde had a strange half grin on his face and, with a half-sigh, "I can only assume you know what that name means." Luzifer nodded silently and the swordsman continued, "My name is Siegfried Schtauffen. Why are you here?"

Luzifer face was expressionless but he was smirking on the inside. Siegfried, obviously didn't trust him, _oh well, I don't trust him._ "I came to… destroy Soul Edge."

Siegfried hardly reacted but added a small quip, "You and half the world; and the other half wants to find and use the cursed thing." The knight sighed heavily. Luzifer just glanced at him but didn't move or say anything. "I owe you for helping me get out of Soul Edge's grasp and for that I am grateful." Luzifer didn't speak so Siegfried changed the subject finding the boys yellow eyes were burning holes in his mind, "Is your eye alright the wound is pretty bloody." The blood was still running quietly down Luzifer's face and he lapped at it when it came to the corner of his mouth. Luzifer shrugged with a half snarl on his face.

Siegfried turned abruptly and head over to the area where he had left the impaled Soul Edge lying on the ground. The two weapons were cold as stone and seem void of power, though Siegfried would not have staked his life on that. The boy named Luzifer followed and Siegfried became uneasy. It was only natural to be somewhat nervous when a boy named after the supposed lord of demons was following you.

They both stared at the two weapons and Siegfried felt a growing sensation around the formally blue sword, remembering from his days as Nightmare's host that the weapon was known as Soul Calibur. Glancing to his side he could tell the boy had a similar feeling towards Soul Edge and became even uneasier. The boy shook his head. Neither of the two noticed that Luzifer's left hand was opening and closing greedily.

Siegfried decided that it was time he learned whether the boy was a friend or a foe, this uncertainty was a tiring weight on a fatigued mind. From what he had seen the boy bore him no outward malice but there was something…wrong and devastatingly familiar about the boy that kept him from trusting him. And citrine eyes were only the smallest part of it.

"Why do you want to destroy Soul Edge?" Siegfried asked quietly, both still transfixed by the immaculate sculpture that the two most powerful entities in the world had become.

Luzifer thought for a long time before he answered. Why did he want to destroy it? Did he really want to destroy it? Looking at the blade had taken all the certainty out of his quest and he felt a strong desire to draw Soul Calibur from the wounded Soul Edge. _My blade of old._ Luzifer shook his head again. These random thoughts were getting on his nerves. "I don't know anymore. It was originally because the sword was too much like me. It is evil and so am I. Neither of us should exist." Luzifer said, dragging up so thoughts he didn't want to think.

Siegfried grinned with no hint of mirth, "That's a feeling I can understand. You kill someone dear to you?" The boy was beginning, disturbingly, to remind Siegfried of himself.

"Mother…" Luzifer hesitated a bit; he didn't know what Blasa was to him. He sighed inwardly, "Sister".

Siegfried stopped grinning and his face was serious. The kid had a heavy, somber look about him and seemed to have a strong remorse for whatever evils he had committed in the past. Besides, Luzifer had helped him escape from Soul Edge the least Siegfried could do was not kill him.

Picking up the two entwined swords Siegfried walked into the castle. He had managed to set aside Requiem and his old plate armor before he had succumbed to the machinations of Nightmare and he would need to retrieve them for his next journey. A journey to find a way to destroy Soul Edge forever. Luzifer shadowed him through the empty stone halls were their footsteps echo and reverberated, creating the sound of an army. Siegfried slipped into the castle armory and began to put on his old plate armor, setting the two stone blades on a decaying wooden table. The armor was hanging from a rack and the various pieces were set up in locations similar to where they would be on the human body. It was made of white steel and every surface was beautifully curved to reflect blows. It had a high steel collar around the neck. It had no helmet but now that he was human once more Siegfried had no reason to hide his face.

This was indeed the armor of paladins.

It took Siegfried quite sometime to work his way into his armor as it was not designed to be put on by the person who would be wearing it. There were meant to be at least two squires to help with the dressing process. Siegfried did not have the luxury of servants and did not feel it to be appropriate to ask Luzifer to help him.

During this time there was a heavy silence. To fill the void Siegfried asked something that had been nibbling on the back of his mind since he had first seen the boy, "Why don't you use your left arm? Is it broken?"

The boy responded with a calm terseness that seemed to contradict the severity of what his words meant, "No. It's dead."

Siegfried finished putting on his armor. He grabbed Requiem from where it was resting against the wall and slipped it over his back, into a loop that held the blade up by the cross guards. Requiem had a wide tapering blade that at the end looked like a diamond had been set on its side. Thus the point on the diamond with the most obtuse angle was used in stabbing while the acute ones were used in a slash. An idea came to Siegfried on how to repay the boy when he saw another sword in on of the stands.

"Here," he said holding the massive, should-need-three-hands sword to Luzifer. "The balance of this weapon is off for my style and I can't use it. It's designed to be used in a single hand though it seems too large for that. I thought that since you can only use one hand it would be optimal for you. It's called the Glam."

Luzifer merely looked at the sword. The front of the blade was triangular with a black center etched with yellow runes. The runes read "The Unmartyred Angel" and at the edge of the black it sloped to a keen edge. At the base of the triangle it curved inwards towards the hilt and had two long cylindrical cross guards.

Taking the sword in his hand Luzifer realized how heavy it felt. It probably weighed no more the ten pounds but the way the weight stretched over the entire blade made it feel heavier then it was. He twirled it easily over the back of his hand. Yes, it was indeed balanced for a single hand. It was meant for cuts coming from the outside in. It was meant for constant motion.

Luzifer made a slight head bow to show gratitude. Siegfried began to walk out of the room after grabbing Soul Edge and Soul Calibur. Again, Luzifer followed him. Before long they exited the gates of the castle and looked onto the plains that surrounded it, watching the see of grass turn a rusty red with light of the setting sun. Siegfried looked at Luzifer over his shoulder and told him that Luzifer was to stop following him.

"No. I will destroy Soul Edge." _It is part of me and thus must die. _Luzifer didn't say the last part because he knew that it would not help his case if Siegfried found that out.

"It is to dangerous." Siegfried said, "You should know from the fight earlier that I cannot control myself if Soul Edge were to come back."

"I fear neither death nor hell. I fear not the loss of my soul." Luzifer intoned with out emotion, the dried blood from the wound on his face, which had finally stopped bleeding, only made his point stronger. Luzifer held up the sword in his new sword and continued, "I am coming whether or not you want it."

Siegfried just looked at him, "Tch…your funeral." With that they both walked into the wide arms of the setting sun.

* * *

Sigh… I hate my dialogs. Well, at any rate Siegfried has finally joined the story just like I promised. A guess what? More random foreshadowing!

Please review, if it was whole thing about giving you guys cancer with my mind I was joking okay? Please be nice and review. Might be a while till I update I got exams both this and next week.

Breaeden Swordwind


	5. Threads to the Future

**Chapter III**

**Threads to the Future**

**By Breaeden Swordwind**

The black orb hovered silently over the empty ground. Nothing grew on the dirt and there was no sun even though the place was illuminated. The light seemed to come from nowhere and possessed no heat or feeling. There was no wind to play about the layers of standing dust that were one of only two remnants of the battle that had almost taken place her. This was a dead land. This was where the first battle should have taken place and the where, according to legend, the last battle would be fought. He that was untrue though, there would be no end to war and battle they would always exist. Unless the plan worked. Then there would be no more battles.

The consciousness within the black, glowing orb hated being here. It brought back memories. Memories that made him angry. The blood of the man he had stabbed here still lay on the ground where he had died and was the only other monument bearing a muted testimony to the almost battle. A man who had come back and who he would have to deal with before he got even more dangerous. The orb sighed, though one could not tell as it had no features and gave no sound, his plan had succeeded but proved to be more work then he had anticipated.

The blood was a pool on the ground and it glowed with a certain heavenly radiance that burned into him. The blood was sacred and had been dropped by the most powerful force in existence save God himself.

Another black orb flew appeared in the sky moving at high speeds. When the ball appeared at the larger orbs side the smaller one reported, "Sir, we're having more and more trouble picking at him. When he's not with women he has a great amount of self-control. If we could inflame his arrogance I think we could-".

"No!" interrupted the larger orb its black glow surging larger and enveloping the smaller, "If we touch his arrogance too much I fear he may regain some of his old power. With his sword now out of reach for the time being I think we need not worry overly. Just keep harassing him."

"But, sir! He got Camal!" the subordinate protested.

"I don't care!" he said and a blast of energy sent the smaller ball flying away into the distance.

"Do you always treat your slaves like that?" a voice from behind him said. The orb turned and saw a white glow descending from the clouds, which had split to allow him in. The consciousness in the black orb felt a deep-seated hatred well up within him.

"To what do I owe the pleasure." The black one said with barely contained malice. Even though they had no physical form, he could feel their haughty arrogance. It almost made him regret that he killed his even more arrogant former master before the two towers of pride could fight each other. That would have been amusing.

"Shut up fool." Said the white orb, "We both saw the recent battle, what I need to know is what you know about how to stop this bastard before he thinks of a way to retrieve the sword."

"I don't see what the problem is. You know what will happen; you have the Muses. What do you need my information." The black orb said, hopefully that would cause them to spill a little information. These bastards wouldn't give him the slightest clue on what was happening if the decision was left to them.

"Theirs a war brewing in Europe. According to the Muses from twenty years ago there isn't supposed to be a war for another 36 years. 17 years ago, on the very day he was born, the Muses went silent! His very existence is tampering with the threads of history. As long as he is alive we have no idea what is happening! The only other time that the Muses were silent was back when he had first been alive!" the white orb yelled with a lack of control that had rarely been seen among his ilk. Normally, they stuck to a snotty aloofness.

"But I thought you said the Platonist Origen was empty? What's the worst he could do without people?" jet sphere spoke with off-balance curiosity. _This might be serious…The Muses, silent! _

"He doesn't need them. If you hadn't killed him before the First Battle he would have won." When the alabaster glow said that the black cursed in his mind. He knew he should never have cut that deal, but that bastard had made him so mad! The consciousness that inhabited the dark sphere had never been able to control himself when brought to wrath "This time he will have his brother with him. Even if he finds only a handful of moderately skilled warriors he could effectively launch an invasion through the Platonist Origen! All he would need to do is break the defenses on the Temple-Mount and he would have access to…" the white orb trailed off not wanting to say what both were thinking.

"Both he and his brother would need to retrieve their swords in order for that to happen! Then they would need to charge through the entire city! They could not possibly win if we faced them with our Hosts." The obsidian orb yelled frantically.

"He may be arrogant but his arrogance is based solidly on power. Do not underestimate him. As for his sword, it would be only too easy for him to remove it but…I think we can come up with a way to voluntarily get rid of both…" the white orb did not elaborate further, as they had a tendency to do, but instead decided to ask the other what he knew, "What have your servants learned about him?"

The black orb gave up the information up grudgingly, "First off all he has the ability to cross into the spiritual plain almost without thinking and has killed one of my best underlings as well as assaulting others. Also, he is able to rearrange his own psyche in bouts of near insanity. He cannot change the composition of it but he can change the structures of it. He has acute problems dealing with females and his guilt and self-loathing are both close to matching his arrogance."

"Fascinating. I want you to continue poking at him. I have already reveled his location to certain orders that would find his death…concurrent with their dogma. Also, I have another of the Tribunal resurrecting the Beast, which will cause his brother some consternation. Even though many of the destined souls that would have taken their parts on the stage of history have relinquished them because of that bastard's existence, I think that with a nudge here and there we can get a few to go after him." The white orb said somewhat musingly.

"Humph"

Nothing left to discuss the white orb began to ascend leaving the black orb to fume alone. When he got back something was going to die.

* * *

_He was cleaving his way through her partners and comrades, just like she remember from what must have been the better part of a year and a half ago. They tried to fight but he was two quick. Cleaving through them like a scythe through wheat. She broke into a run and abandoned her friends to his thirsty blade. They would have to forgive her. There was nothing she could do._

_She dashed through the woods, under trees that groaned in their attempted to support the slate gray sky that weighed down from above. She could hear behind her that the yellow-eyed boy was following her…and gaining. He was too fast. The obstacles she scrambled over, he leapt in an easy bound, ice patches that tripped her up only made him go faster. Finally he caught up to her and, grabbing her wrist in the one hand he seemed able to move, pinned her to a tree. He smiled viciously at her, but with a slight tenderness. He pressed his body against her and whispered, with Death's own voice "You can run from me no more". She felt comfort tingle through her and she wrapped her free around his waist and let his presence ease her to sleep. He let go of her arm and held her back. Slowly she began to feel her life siphoning away from her, but she didn't care. He would be with her for eternity whether he wanted to or not._

Her eyes shot open but she did not launch her torso up so that she was sitting erect drenched in sweat. People only did that in stories. The dream she had just had was part nightmare, part fantasy and disturbing the whole way through. She didn't know what to make of it as she twisted her head to the smoldering remains of the campfire, which sent small tendrils of smoke heavenward.

What did she feel towards him? Whatever it was it was strong and it was destroying her ability to get a good night's sleep. She would at least give that kid a piece of her mind when she saw him next in addition to whatever other actions that she deemed necessary at the time. And to think that the kid was accusing her of running from him when it was clear she was going after him! Whatever it was she couldn't possibly care about him at all. It was some mix of angst and rancor that was causing her to feel this way.

* * *

The castle was had an unearthly calm as the man garbed in white fire walked calmly through it. According to the Muses from many years ago there was another, a scythe bearer, who was to have done what the flame-covered man had been sent to do. _Trivial, _he thought. All that matter was success no matter how it was achieved. That was how they could finish and perfect the creation their master had left half done.

The bent and broken bits of armor lay upon the ground. However, the blood of innocent that had been shed upon it still gave it a dark malicious consciousness that merely required the power to be set from. If one listened closely one could hear the thousand infernal screams like a fly's quite hum in the background.

The man out stretched his arms and a light radiated out from him. He granted the armor a fake body and let it reform as it had been intended. Its right arm and back were covered by a fleshy growth that throbbed with think ropes of arteries and veins. It possessed a sharp conical horn on its helmet that gave the sense of being based on some demonic unicorn. The suit of armor collapsed to its knees and slight bits of dust kicked into the air giving the area an evil aroma that inflamed the lungs to cough. The man standing there might have coughed himself had he been of the physical realm.

Two red eyes opened with the blackness that the helmet contained and a scream pierced the surrounding lands for miles. No one heard it though. The castle and the lands around had been scourged clean of life many years ago in one of the reborn consciousness' former lives. It continued to scream as the light coming from the standing figure that had resurrected it pained the larval creature that had taken up dwelling within the empty shell of the armor. It finally stopped when the man disappeared in a flash of agonizing light.

The beast-armor stood and felt incomplete. Most of its consciousness had been sealed away. With what remained of its power, it created a sword that appeared in the gauntlet of the non-mutated hand. The blade was massive, demonic, and bore in its middle a large eye, lidless and hungry. The consciousness felt an instinctual desire to find the one who had previous born this armor so that it might once again have a host. However, it could not feel the energy of that previous bearer. All that the consciousness could feel was the signal of its master and the feeling was dwindling. The trail was like a faint thread that led away into the distance, like the golden thread that Theseus had taken with him into the depths of the labyrinth. So the beast, that would come, once more, to call itself Nightmare, followed the pathway.

As it journeyed it obeyed its primal instincts to slaughter and absorb the souls of the slain to strengthen the sword that it had made. Each time it did the eye silently screamed in orgasmic ecstasy. Its pupil expanding and causing the hackles of all within a five-mile radius to rise erect on their necks. The sun would seem to grow dimmer and the skin would become a mountain range of goosebumps. The mouth would go dry and dark thoughts of various kinds, dependent of the sin the afflicted had the greatest leaning towards, would pervade the mind, sometimes causing bouts of hysteria that led to the commission that person's sin of choice.

The beast would find its way to battlefields and undefended towns, slaughter everyone and in the chaos escape once more. It was during the massacre of a small village that he noticed someone clad in green come from the horizon. She asked the beast if she could serve under him and the beast let her become his slave. The strangest thing about her was she did feel a lust for sin when Nightmare devoured a soul. For she was one of the few truly innocent people in the world.

* * *

Abelard was listening quietly at a bar. There was an aura of smoke and sweat that gave the air a bitter taste as men released their scent into the unmoving air. The sounds of mewling drunkards and laughing lechers burned the ears of Abelard. Every time he heard a man utter some new profanity Abelard felt himself get a new gray hair. He hated being here but he needed to be in order to get the information he was looking for.

His thoughts turned lightly to what might be happening back home. He had run away from his responsibilities as a worker underneath the Landgraf of Leuchtenberg, and he felt sum what guilty. His church always told him it was his responsibility as a member of the third estate to work loyal under his master and if he did that he would have eternal joy in the afterlife. Though it pained him to think that he might loose heaven because of his actions he knew that pursuing a servant of the Black One was more important. He hoped his wife would be alright, he hadn't told her where he was going and had only left her note saying he was going to slay the demon that had killed their daughter, their only child. He wasn't going to be stopped till he had sent that demon back to the hellfire that had spawned it.

He was leaning over the counter, and was alone in that he had no metal mug will with frothing alcoholic liquid. His faith would not grant him that reprieve. He was beginning to think this yet another fruitless night when, upon the misty air, he heard what he had been searching for. "You shoulds haves seens this bastard." The man said with a drunken accent that seemed to add an "s" to everything he said, " He and this knight comes walkins' ups tos mes. Is was lookings ats hims ands hes gots this massive swords on his backs alls triangle-shapeds and s. His eyes ares closeds and I stare at his arms which is alls ins this slings and hes opens his and hes hads these balefuls yellows eyes and stares at mes alls demons-like."

Another inebriated fool add his two cents to the conversation, also in a drunken drawl, " Ah yes, Ah know thaht bahstahrd. Cahme up to mah house sahyin' thaht he needed directions to thah next town ovah. I pointed it ahut tah 'im and later ah woman cahme lookin' for him and Ah pointed hah to where he went. Pretty gahl thaht. Blahnd hahr ahnd ah pretty fahce. Wouldn't trahst hah with mah moneh thahgh. Hahd ah theifah look ahbout hah. Anahwah Ah sent hah south with thah othah men."(1)

A third voice began to speak, a newcomer who had not yet gotten as drunk as the others, " I wonder if that girl was chasing that yellow-eyed boy because he didn't want to marry her or something like that?"

" Ah don't know ahbout thaht but if Ah was in his shoes Ah wouldn't be runnin' instead Ah would be…" Abelard stopped listening before they started delving into such bawdy subjects, as drunkards of his sex were liable to do. So the demon-boy was heading south with a knight that had sold his soul to the devil, no doubt. He pondered the girl for a minute, though. Another whose life had been ravaged by the demon-host? Or maybe another devil-worshipper who desired to cavort with the Dark Lord's servants?

Abelard stepped out into the cold night and was relived to finally have fresh air filling his nostrils. The thin film of sweat that had appeared over his time that sauna of debauchery bit into his skin. He began to stride into the darkening distance. At any rate he wasn't going to catch up with either the demon or the girl if he stood still.

* * *

The smells of yeasty bread baking wafted to her nose as they did everyday at this time. As they would everyday for the rest of her life it seemed. She had always thought that after you had gone on journeys to save the world from an evil sword that your life would never be the same. But after two journeys out into the world she had returned home, had a scuffle with her parents and returned to life as usual. She sighed. At least she had her peace and a small bakery in a tucked away little town. Stability, she had, indeed. Her only woe was perhaps how her parents scoffed that her youthful journeys had scared away all potential suitors who feared that their newly gained wife might walk out on them without a moments notice. That thought always brought up this nagging feeling that some how she should be married or at least engaged by now. It was like she was part of a life that should not have come to pass. Alas, it was an empty feeling and had no merit to it.

Her stomach still had that faint queasiness it always had since the shards from Soul Edge had briefly made a home in her belly. They had been removed from her but they left this nagging sense in her gut that never went away. A tender little reminder that there was always evil in the world and not even Hephaestus could stop it all. But then Hephaestus had his own problems these days, in addition to an evil sword that was draining souls from the world. With the ending of warfare and conflict in Germany and the death of Martin Luther the church had been coming down hard on "heretics" and "pagans". It had grown less and less tolerant of those Greeks who still worshiped the old gods, along with or in place, of the Christian god. Hephaestus was one of the many gods whose temples were coming under their greatest threat in centuries. She supposed he was so concerned with his own survival he couldn't take the time to communicate with every little Athenian baker's daughter he had sent out to defeat the greatest evil in the world.

Sophitia sighed again. This was going to be another slow day. She idly wondered when her father was going to show up. He came in a bit later then her every morning as he gradually weaned her into doing all the responsibilities that the bakery entailed by herself. He said in a few more months she could take over full time. The thought of finally gainning some responsibility held a mild excitement for her. To think one day she might raise this little hole-in-the-wall bakery in to a-

The feeling in her stomach was gone. She noticed as soon as she could not feel it and her entire train of though cut off. She had grown so used to the presence that its lack was like loosing a color in her vision. It just made the world seem…off.

She needed to think of what this meant. What could have caused the feeling to vanish? She stood up quickly, knocking over the stool she had been sitting on. The bakery was empty in moments of Sophitia as she dash towards the nearby shrine to Hephaestus. All that remained was the smell of bread baking slowly changing to the acrid scent of bread burning.

The shrine to Hephaestus was a predominately marble structure with large columns that, to the surprise of none, were sculpted in the classical style that the Greeks had made many of their structures in. It overlooked the land around it from its perch in the mountains and was filled with the calming sound of water that came bubbling from a nearby string in preparation for its decent down the mountain face. In the center of the shrine was a statue of Hephaestus that scraped the marble roof and peered down upon the mortals that came to pray, with iron apathy. Its face was one that was of a man who bore wisdom and its jaw had a beard that only increased that impression. Its hands were a sword and buckler. The sword was a single-handed and the blade, if set tip to earth, would come up to his knee. In the way of many other gladii it was short for thrusting. The edges of the blade were both curved concavely and at the end it bore a diamond tip. The shield was a circle, which curved outwards in the center so that strikes would deflect easily. Emblazoned upon the shield was an ornate omega.

In front of this armed statue was a marble altar and upon it was an exact duplicate of both the sword and shield. Sophitia was familiar with these weapons, as she had used them in her journeys out into the world in pursuit of Soul Edge. The cold nipped at her flesh and she could see her breath making wisps in front of her as she ran into the empty shrine. No one was around, either having lost faith in the old gods or in fear that they would be found and accused of heresy or the performing of pagan rituals. Sophitia knelt down in front of the statue and began to pray to Hephaestus that he would reveal to her why the tingling in her gut was no longer there.

She must have knelt there in silence for hours, her mind working furiously in its demands for divine assistance. For a very long time there was silence, suddenly a stress began to build in her mind. It was exhaustion from the constant thinking that she was doing as she prayed. The tension built and finally broke causing her to loose consciousness

The world around her was pure black. She bucked to her feet, not knowing what she was standing on. The world was quiet and empty, but a light began to pierce the darkness and Sophitia had to cover her eye in order to avoid being blinded by the radiance. When her eyes had adjusted to the illumination she looked up at the man. He looked almost exactly like the statue of Hephaestus except slightly younger looking and he had no beard. He was garbed in loose white silk robe and across his chest were folded sheets of ivory flame. His eyes were an agonizingly vibrant green that whispered of the life that comes from the trees, old and wise. His hair was black as onyx and his comforting smile sheltered all those who stood in its presence from life's rain.

"Sophitia, the answer to your question is that Soul Edge is being protected," Hephaestus said to her, dripping knowledge and conceit with every word. "Being protected by two fallen warriors, one is a former demon host and the other is a demonic boy, you must seek them out, kill them, and destroy Soul Edge." She was about to ask where her opponents were but Hephaestus cut her off, "They are currently traveling in Germany. Now go there is no time for hesitation."

With those words in her mind she regained consciousness. She was in a slight daze for a few moments but recovered and got to her feet. She stood tall and stoic, she knew it was her duty to her people and to her god to destroy the evil sword that had brought about the Evil Seed. She shuddered at the mere memory of the dark abomination that had appeared in the sky.

Walking up to the altar and clasping the sacred weapons of Hephaestus, Sophitia muttered a silent prayer to all those she was leaving behind, once again.

* * *

Siegfried was backing up trying to get a little more room to react to his opponent's movements, but the boy was to fast. Not only was he keeping pace but while doing it he was sidestepping, feigning, and dodging blows from Siegfried's weapon. Siegfried had managed to avoid being hit but it had taken a little more creativity then he was used to. Luzifer was good, he had to give the boy that much. They were dueling with wooden rods that Luzifer had made on night while Siegfried was sleeping. He remembered that the boy had felled a middling sized tree and had hewed from it two five foot lengths of wood. Siegfried had finished setting camp for the night when Luzifer dragged the two lengths from the half-light, one dragging behind each shoulder as he held the end over his shoulder with his arms wrapped along the log's circumference. Siegfried had asked what he was doing but Luzifer had just shrugged and sat down. Siegfried decided not to press the subject. When he awoke he found two well-made practice swords with a slight covering of ash. It looked as though someone had made them by burning away all the wood and thus revealing the rods that Siegfried held in his hand. Siegfried Luzifer how he had made them and Luzifer shrugged, _"It's something I do."_

In addition, to, apparently, being skill with fire, the boy had taken rather quickly to the Glam. It had taken a few hours for him to get used to the weight and size difference but once he had Luzifer had become a potent mix of foot speed and raw power. That's how Siegfried had fond himself defending against the blows from Luzifer's training sword. The boy moved in blur of motion and deftly moved in and out of Siegfried's ideal range. Almost all of the yellowed-eye bugger's attacks had a movement as part of their motion. Either allowing Luzifer to get too close or to get away or sometimes both in the same string. However, the boy had a fair bit a wind up with most of his attacks and their was a large gap between each of his strikes, though the fact he was normally during both these opportunities to away from their impact. If Siegfried held the boy at bay he could often get off some blows of his own, the key was making them count, which Luzifer made difficult.

Siegfried played a different game. He moved from blow and shifted easily stance to stance and used a variety of similar looking moves to deceive his opponent. Even though Luzifer used a few different stances (even one that involved him sheath his sword and using his had as a third leg, which was disconcerting to say the least) they were all very different from his main stance and had little deception. While using a sword as large as Siegfried's cause a far bit of wind up and recovery time between blows it was nowhere near as bad a Luzifer's. Siegfried used his momentum to try get ahead of his opponent and used power and range to punish his foe for any mistakes that he made.

All in all though they were pretty close to even, Siegfried keep his blade or body in motion to keep momentum from blow to blow and hold off his opponent and Luzifer using feigns and speed to create openings that he could exploit.

Siegfried had just launched a risky low sweep at the very edge of his range, Luzifer noticed it coming and leaped with his blade over his head in an overly exaggerated over hand strike. It was at the moment that a memory, from a time that Siegfried didn't want to remember, bubbled to the surface of his consciousness like bubbles of methane from a log that is rotting underneath the surface of a lake.

* * *

Nightmare- _No! I cannot blame this on the Soul Edge, that's me-_ Siegfried walked down the streets of the town. Blood baptized everything with the cluster of homes including Siegfried's azure armor. Corpse lay in the middle of the street and souls swirled around in a whirlpool with the eye of Soul Edge at its vortex.

Siegfried let out a laugh that twisted in his inhuman throat to come up as a disgusting wheeze and his armor shook with the tremors of his euphoria as he felt each soul enter into the eye. A voice came over his shoulder and turned him from his revelries, "You sick bastard! I'll kill you!" Siegfried looked slantwise out his eye and saw the man running at him, leaping, and bringing his sword behind him and a vertical slash. The attack was too obvious, too easy to predict. Siegfried easily sidestepped it and slashed the man clean through and watched as his soul joined the ever growing whirlwind around him.

* * *

As the memory flashed through his mind Siegfried was briefly distracted. He was unable to dodge the looming vertical and thus had to bring his blade up to parry, not think that the attack might have been a trick. As soon as Luzifer saw the parry he brought the blade down but diverted it slightly so that it went around the parry and came down for a low sweep.

Siegfried did not wear most of his armor. He left the more encumbering parts off as it made it much easier to move. He still had the main breast plate, the vambraces, and the greaves on at all times, and before the practice duel he had put on his gauntlets. But he took off the shoulder guards, elbow guards, the tabard and most importantly all the leg armor above the shin. This is a long way to say that when Luzifer he his thigh it hurt like the five flames of hell.

Siegfried's legs gave underneath and he fell to his knees. Luzifer stood above him, " You lost your concentration." He said blandly. Luzifer yellow eyes were slowly boring a hole through Siegfried's skull with their sharp apathy.

"Sorry I just had a memory of my time as Nightmare." Siegfried sighed and began to stand up. Once he was erect, he told Luzifer of the memory.

Luzifer didn't react in any meaningful way; he just stood their absorbing it as though he knew thousands of people who had massacred entire villages in order to absorb the souls of the inhabitants. Siegfried finished his story and Luzifer nodded slightly with a pondering intellectualism. He seemed out of touch with reality for a few moments then came back, "Just don't blame your problems on the sword. It's your fault. All the problems people have are there own fault, they just don't like to take the blame for it. To pin your problems on others is the fast road to weakness. If something unexpected happens; you didn't prepare enough. If you were beaten; you weren't strong enough."

Siegfried felt a forlorn, depressive smile spread across his face and as he stood on his shaky leg, "You don't have to remind me. I already know that I am to blame for all those deaths." The two of them walked back to were they had set up camp as the last light of the sun gave out in the west. "According to the man who gave us directions we're going to be passing through a town at the end of the day. We should probably stop to rest there and plan our next move." Siegfried sat down on the trunk of a tree that must have fallen sometime ago as it was in an advance state of decomposition. "However, what are we going to do about your name? You might not mind being called that but I am sure someone will take offense."

"What if you just contract my name? Call me Luz in public. No one will take offense at that."

Siegfried nodded, "But what about a surname? You will need something to that effect."

Luzifer seemed to think about for a moment but eventually he though of something that would work, "I'll use your last name. We look similar enough to be related; cousins or, maybe, brothers by different mothers."

"All right I suppose that will have to do." Siegfried stood up, walked to the opposite side of the fire from Luzifer, and lay down to go to sleep.

* * *

_ He was running from something. He didn't know what because he knew if he took the time to look it would catch up to him. Whatever it was it cast a light from behind him and it illuminate the sprawling woods that Luzifer was running through. Luzifer steps landed softly on his own shadow as he covered the last legs of the forest. His hands were bound by threads and upon them were the faces of people. Some he recognize (Siegfried, Blasa, his mother) and some he did not (A blond haired girl, a brown haired man, and a strange looking girl with cerulean hair and lavender eye)._

_He arrived at stark foreboding cliff and the only way to go was up. He bit into the ropes of souls that bound his hands and as he tore them off they release screams that overlapped and reverberated through his being. Putting a hand on the cliff he began to scale it. He could her whatever was following begin to climb right behind him and he picked up the pass. When he got to the top he threw his body over the brink and rolled along the ground before getting up. He saw a sword that stood half impaled in the ground. It watched him calmly with its singular eye and he grasped the beast-blade's hilt. Twisting it from the earth he brought it around in slash at the light that was following him._

Luzifer sat bolt upright as he woke up covered in sweat. And here he always that people only lunged awake in books. He held his head and leaned back against a tree trunk. The sun was about peak from beneath the horizon and Luzifer decided not to bother going back to sleep.

* * *

1) Incase you could not understand the accent he said "Ah yes, I know that bastard. Came up to my house saying that he needed directions to the next town over. I point it out to him and later a woman came looking for him and I pointed her to where he went. Pretty girl that. Blond hair and a pretty face. Wouldn't trust her with my money though. Had a theify look about her. Anyway I sent her south with the other men" 


	6. Before the Breaking

**Chapter IV**

**Before the Breaking**

The sun held a vestige of warmth as it peeked its mane over the edge of the horizon like every summer sun did in Germany at dawn. Its light crept along the ground and alighted on the sleeping form of Luzifer. He seemed to be mildly annoyed by the feeling of light on his body but he remained asleep. Siegfried lay on the opposite side of the remains of the night's fire and he awoke with the coming of the dawn. He lifted Requiem slipped it threw the loop on his back so that it hung behind him. The sound of his half-armor clanking with his stiff motion woke up the sleeping Luzifer who stood up as well. Luzifer twisted his neck in a circle and stretched warily. Siegfried grabbed a satchel that contained his things and Luzifer began to walk to the path that they had been following the day before.

Neither of the two spoke and Siegfried let himself be wrapped up in his own thoughts. He needed to figure out a way to destroy Soul Edge but no way was coming to mind. How do you destroy the physical embodiment of death and violence? It was like trying to kill a god. Impossible. Maybe someone would know how but how would he find that one person in a million without drawing attention to himself. And he had that to worry about as well. Practically every person alive had heard about the legend of Soul Edge and many of them dedicated their life to find the weapon that had names in some cultures like "the Sword of Heroes" or "the Sword of Salvation". If someone thought he was carrying Soul Edge life could get a lot more complicated then it already was.

Siegfried could try and find someone or something more powerful then Soul Edge that could possibly destroy it but that seemed highly unlikely. After all Soul Edge had been broken into shards before and could reform from them if they were gathered together once more. Whatever he used to destroy Soul Edge would have to be able to destroy it completely and utterly. This brought up the interesting concept of what happened to those loose shards of Soul Edge now that the main weapon had been sealed away by an equal and oppositely aligned power. Did they go dormant as well or were they still out their radiating evil into the world, possibly corrupting weak souls? There were too many variables to account for and Siegfried didn't like it one bit.

They had now arrived at the path that meandered it way through the woods that occupied this section of the German countryside. The path avoided trees and did its best to follow the contours of the land but at times that was impossible while still going around the thickly spread trees. The forest looked primeval and one could here the beasts of the ground paw their way through the glades that had protected marauding barbarians during the times of the Roman Empire, which was now long passed. The only thing that harkened back to its ancient memory was the Holy Roman Empire, which was its descendent in name only.

Moving along the path to the next town Siegfried was slightly concerned with his half memory of Luzifer. He didn't know if it was a true memory or just an aberration that he had picked up from his time wielding Soul Edge. Maybe Soul Edge had once been wielded by someone similar to Luzifer and had passed the memory on to Siegfried. That didn't seem right though. Soul Edge had probably just corrupted his memory, giving him fake memories and removing real ones.

Trust was also weighing heavily on Siegfried's mind. Specifically whether or not he could trust Luzifer. The boy showed latent abilities with swordsmanship, which was disconcerting. He seemed to be able to play with fire in ways that were…inhuman. Last night he had seen Luzifer playing with a small ball of fire that he rolled along the back of his hand! He had tried asking the boy about it but the boy just left the question unanswered. _"It's just something I do" indeed! _All that stacked on the fact the boy was named after the lord of demons left Siegfried's belief in coincidences thinly stretched.

Siegfried glanced at the boy walking near him. His head was down cast to the earth, as though his neck could not support the weight of his head, and he looked both depressed and humble. Siegfried knew that if you actually took time to talk to him you would not think him humble, though you might still think him depressive. The boy at times, when he wasn't really thinking about what he was saying, could be _very _arrogant. Right now he had a very introverted expression painted across his face and he seemed taken with whatever thoughts were plaguing his mind at the moment.

The sun had long ago reached it zenith when they took a quick break to eat. Siegfried tried initially to make conversation with Luzifer but the boy firmly resisted any attempts to pass the time with idle conversation. Suddenly, the boy perked up and looked back the way they had come. He seemed intent on the path they had traveled and scanned the horizon. Siegfried looked at him questioningly, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing" replied the taciturn boy, "Just my mind playing tricks on me."

Sometime later the two of them crested a ridge that they were ascending and looked as the ground receded away and the trees became more intermittent, after the last of the trees was a small clearing of a few feet that stopped at the wall of the first house. The entire village was centered on the path and it seemed like not much mercantile traffic passed through the area, for there was only a small hostel/house for their use as a resting station. _Oh well, _thought Siegfried, _It's better then another night on the ground. _They walked into town and most of the people looked up from their chores at the two traveling warriors with eyes that only reinforced Siegfried's assumption that few travels came through this way.

Luzifer looked at the people skeptically and Siegfried jaw almost dropped at the boy's lack of trust. And he thought he was being suspicious for suspecting Luzifer. A girl walked up to Siegfried and tugged slightly on his tasset. Siegfried knelt down in front of the little girl who could hardly be more then eight years old, "What do you want?" he said in friendliest voice, which still sounded a little gruff.

The girl looked at him for a moment with eyes that were five sizes to big for her face before she spoke, "Are you a knight, sir?"

Siegfried chuckled as he nodded and the girl smiled. She looked up at Luzifer, "Then you must be his squire."

"What?" Luzifer said with a slight shock. "I'm the squire of no one. Fool girl!" then Luzifer turned and stalked off toward the hostel.

Siegfried couldn't help but laugh at what had just transpired. He put one hand on the girl's shoulder, "Don't you worry about him. He's gets angsty when he thinks someone is insulting him." The girl only looked more confused, "You'll understand when you're older." The girl smiled and ran away. Happiness was so fragile when you're young and even more so when your older. He could remember all the happy futures he had taken away as Nightmare. How he had slain and laughed upon the graves of so many only to grant Soul Edge the power it said that it would use to resurrect his father who Siegfried had murdered during a raid. Of course the blade had no intention of rebirthing Siegfried's father and he didn't know if it had the power even if it add consented to, but Siegfried had give the weapon his soul and his body all the same. _Yes, little girl, I am a knight but I am not a very good one. _He let the wind blow a single stray leaf, withered and brown that stuck to him like a stone and clutched to his armor, gripping to him like a sullying tick. It didn't make him heavier in any meaningful way but he felt like he could not go forward with it staining his otherwise shining armor. Finally, it blew away into the wind and Siegfried could feel the blocks in his mind that were preventing his movement fade away. _Fall is coming, _he thought to himself.

Siegfried followed Luzifer, who had escaped into the confines of the inn. He expected to see Luzifer in the process of obtaining their rooms but what he found was something completely different. He walked into the common room, which was relatively free of the scent of smoke and sweat, as the night crowds of tired workers had not yet arrived. There were a few of the town's lazy men who had already pulled up their seats at the various tables that dotted the area around the central hearth. The hearth consisted of a ring of stone around ashes and had not yet been filled with fresh wood for the night's fire. Though there was probably already a fire going in the kitchen to prepare the food for the coming crowds. The innkeepers daughter was sitting placidly behind the bar in order to keep the tavern under control while the innkeeper was in the back cooking the meal for the night. The girl was quite beautiful and had long brunette hair that framed a fair face and a feminine frame.

That's not what surprised Siegfried; he had expected that. What surprised him was Luzifer sitting at the bar as far away from the innkeeper's daughter as he possibly could with a mug of ale in front of him he obviously did not order, judging from the expression on his face. His head was turned away from the girl who was staring at him and Siegfried almost started laughing but he resisted the feeling of humor and began to walk up to the girl. As he passed Luzifer he whispered to him, "Come on lets get our rooms." Luzifer then stood up behind him and walk with Siegfried to the girl to get their rooms, but constantly kept his face looking away from the girl who was still looking at him with that predatory gleam in her eye. Siegfried took his place in front of the girl but she didn't pay him a glance. He never thought Luzifer was the kind of guy that caught the eye of women but then again he was not a woman.

He pointedly cleared his throat and the girl spared him a glance, looked him up and down, gave him a sly smile, and spoke with that predatory glimmer in her eye, "Hey, what can I do for you?" Siegfried could see why Luzifer didn't want to talk to this girl she seemed to be head hunting and for an antisocial boy like Luzifer that is the last thing he could want to deal with.

"I'd like a room please." Well, Luzifer would have to learn to deal with women like this if he was to survive in the world. In fact, women like this were the least of his worries, there were probably many women, and men, who would kill him without a second thought.

Just as Siegfried had been expecting she played with what he said in order to get Luzifer to talk to her, something she had probably given him the ale in order to get him to do, "And will your friend be getting a room." She said be and getting almost in the same breath intentionally.

Luzifer scratched the back of his head rabidly and kept his gave off hers. "Yeah I'll take a room please." His voice caught a couple times as he said that. Siegfried sighed, that would only encourage the girl. Where was that arrogant disdain that Luzifer used when speaking to him. That would make sure the girl never came back again. Alas, though, the girl would probably be harassing Luzifer for the rest of there stay here.

"Alright, I'll go get your rooms prepared. You may sit and rest in the common rooms until they are ready…but" she held the 'but' and looked at Luzifer slyly, "I was wondering if you could help me as some of the stuff it need is to heavy for me to lift and I hate to bother my mother who is busy preparing tonight's dinner." Yep, Luzifer had not deterred her. He almost felt pity for Luzifer.

Luzifer once more brought his good hand to the back of his head to scratch his brown-blonde hair. "Um…I can't…I can only use one arm and I can't really be of much help with only one hand" He was positively squirming underneath her finger.

She flashed him a dangerous smile, and look at the ground with what Siegfried could tell was fake bashfulness. "Well, I'm sure a strong warrior like yourself can still be useful. Don't tell my mother but I'll even take some off your tab." Luzifer tried to squirm away but Siegfried knew he'd have to step in on this one. Luzifer was beyond lost at this point.

"Look woman" Siegfried snarled putting his hand between the woman's gaze and Luzifer's body, "My friend can't be bothered by you so please go away, prepare those rooms, and leave him the hell alone." The innkeeper's daughter practically scurried to get out of reach of Siegfried and as soon as she went up the stairs to the rooms above, Luzifer let out a tired sigh and walked to a table not to far from where to men were talking.

As Siegfried got close to the two talking men, one of whom was an aging man who had seen much ill in his time and the other was an equally aged man, he could hear some of what they were talking about. "There's fighting up north I heard. The Lutherans are rising up again to fight against the Holy See and there have been some skirmishing."

The other man shook his head and sighed, "Have they not seen enough battle over the last fifty years? What can be gained from the violence but the greater weakening of Christendom? Damn, hot bloods never thinking about the greater good."

A younger man leaned from the bar and shouted back at the two old men, "Your too old fashion, geezers. Christendom is no more! We are finally free to be nation's not some bland conglomeration of bastards, who hardly know nor trust their supposed allies, who spend their time plotting against one another. We can now pursue individual strength as supposed to communal weakness."

One of the old men snapped back at the younger man as both Luzifer and Siegfried took their seat, "What's that? We're gaining strength but at what cost? Our souls! That's the cost! Its faith in His Holiness that got us through the past millennia and its faith that will get us through the next one. What is faith if we abandon it when the going gets rough?"

"Yeah? Want to talk about this outside?" said the youth haughtily. Siegfried sighed with melancholy about the state of things where two old men were about to gang up on a boy all over some pointless argument about a meaningless subject. What would they gain from this fight? He mused that as he watched the three men walk outside. As a warrior he knew that sometimes violence was necessary but surely this was a waste of blood. He glanced at his comrade who was sitting there looking like he was going asleep in his chair. It was at the moment that Siegfried noticed that Luzifer didn't care about how those three men were going to pummel each other for nothing that he heard the first blow land as the fight erupted outside.

How could that arrogant bastard not care? A wide haymaker landed. Does he not care about others? Someone was kneed in the groin. Well, if the bastard doesn't care about the emotions of others then maybe he will conveniently ignore Luzifer's emotions. " Luz, you need to learn to talk to women, you know?" What Siegfried did know was where this conversation would lead, right to a nest of negative emotions inside Luzifer's head.

"Tch… It doesn't matter." Luzifer tried to brush it away but Siegfried wasn't about to be stopped by such a basic technique of subject avoidance. He could hear someone make a block outside.

"You were completely stuttering there. Was it because she was making a pass at you? Or is that how you talk to all women?" Someone slammed into the wall outside and was pinned against the wood wall with a flurry of punches.

Luzifer looked up his eyes throwing daggers at Siegfried, "Leave me alone!" he snarled and his voice scrapped against his throat causing it to come up mangled.

Siegfried couldn't help but get the feeling he was being a bit of a bastard but he pressed on anyway, "What did you murder somebody or something?" One of the old men crashed through the door and the other was grabbing the young man from behind.

Luzifer stood up suddenly causing his seat to tip back and fall to the ground with a clatter. He began walking towards the stairs but stopped halfway there and looked over his shoulder at Siegfried, "If you must know _mortal_, every women I have ever cared about I have murdered. My mother and Blasa." He then stormed up the stairs in a tornado of pent up anger. Crap, that girl would get him by himself if he went up there now, he didn't know if Luzifer could keep her off by himself. He knew he had been a heel and he thought he owed Luzifer that much at least, so he followed the boy up the stairway.

On the floor above, Siegfried saw Luzifer tearing down the hallway in a seething fury. Doors lined both sides of the hall and from one of them came the girl from earlier. Siegfried began striding towards the two as the girl stood in front of Luzifer. She said something to Luzifer that Siegfried could not hear they he could imagine it was suggestive. Luzifer's response, however, Siegfried did hear and it was a feral growl, each word sounding like its own sentence, "Go. Away. Mortal. Wench. Or. I. Will. Kill. You!" With that Luzifer pushed the girl aside and walked into the room slamming the door behind him. The girl looked shocked and flustered, to say the very least. Suddenly, Luzifer started screaming. It was a despairing wail, guttural, banshee-like, animalistic, primal, deep, high. All these things it was at once. It made Siegfried's skin crawl and his stomach clench. His mouth went dry and his consciousness eroded. He would never make Luzifer angry on purpose ever again. Whatever kind of shrieking was emanating from that room it was inhuman.

When the yelling stopped the girl ran as fast a she could tears running down her cheeks, and Siegfried could not fault her for that.

* * *

He finally stopped yelling and collapsed against the wall exhausted. He looked around his room, which was empty except for a small pallet in the far corner and a window that looked out onto the town. _You are truly pathetic, _he thought to himself. No! He was better then all those other mortals! He was the greatest warrior alive and he would prove it. But more then all else he was a murderer of innocent women. He held his head in his living hand.

He was pathetic and he knew it. What was he doing? What good could he do against Soul Edge when it was the closest thing he had to a kindred spirit? What could a slayer of innocents do against evil? You can't fight fire with fire it only makes more fire.

He sighed. But then what would doing nothing accomplish? That was easy it would accomplish nothing. It seemed that good was in need of hand and he supposed it couldn't be choosy about who it got to help it. That meant that the odd murder could lend its aid if necessary.

Letting his head lean back against the wall he looked out the window at the town, which was now lit by the moonlight that came in seraphic waves and tried to decide what Siegfried and him were going to do about destroying Soul Edge. Suddenly, an idea came to him. The men who had started fighting down stairs mentioned that there was war brewing up north. If they took Soul Edge they could surely keep a low profile working as mercenaries. With the money from fighting they could stay on the move. Not only that but they could meet powerful warriors who might have heard of an item more powerful then Soul Edge and Luzifer could buy books that might also have information dealing with that subject.

Luzifer smiled, his two favorite things in life, fighting and knowledge, война и знание, guerra e conoscenza.

Luzifer stood up and prepared to go to sleep. He took off the sword on his shoulder but, since he had gotten rid of that obnoxious girl before she could finish preparing the room and with that give him some blankets, he left all his cloths on. He hated that girl. She had brought up all his self-loathing and not having quilts to keep him warm was a small price to pay not to have to deal with her ever again. Just as he was about to lie down he noticed something outside. Looking out the window he saw on the rooftop of the house across the way. The house was a primarily wooden structure that had a flat room, in the center of which was a hunched form. The moon gave off enough light so that Luzifer could see that the form was a female human. She had strange blue-green hair and her cloths were green and purple with what look like either fur or feathers at the collar. He couldn't see the details very clearly though. What he did notice was a circle of steel that reflected the moonlight towards him. He didn't know if such a weapon existed but a weapon it appeared to be judging from the way the form was holding it. He knew he had seen someone following them earlier that morning. He moved his sword closer to the bed just incase. Before he got in bed though he waved goodnight to the form across the road from him and it immediately made itself scarce. _That aught to intimidate her for a while. _To be safe though he slept with his hand on the hilt of the Glam.

* * *

"No" Siegfried said. Siegfried would never have considered himself a scholar but this was by far the stupidest idea that any human had ever come up with. Luzifer had just made a case about taking Soul Edge, the greatest object of evil in the world, into the center of violence where warriors gathered, warriors who would probably like to get their hands on the demonic weapon. What if Soul Edge fell into the hands of one of those warriors? What new hells could be release upon the world? Not to mention that Siegfried had done enough killing and didn't feel that he could in good conscience work as mercenary, he had committed enough murders as Nightmare.

"How else are we going to get money to keep up this traveling? If we don't get money from fighting I'm going to have to go back to getting money from stealing!" Luzifer shouted as he walked beside Siegfried down the path the wound its way to the next town. The next village according to the man who had given them directions was larger then the last one they had passed through as it was centered on a hub of local commerce. Siegfried thought about that option. When he was younger he had led a band of thieves known as Schwarzwind and had no desire to return to his shameful past. However, it was true that they would be in severe need of funding if they were to be moving constantly.

"Do what you will but harm none alright?" Siegfried gave in a little. He knew that no matter what he said would really have an effect on what Luzifer would actually do but he still felt a pang of guilt for condoning the boy's behavior.

"Tch…it doesn't matter whether you give me permission or not, mortal. I will do whatever the hell I choose. " Luzifer said, brushing off Siegfried's words easily before continuing, "I have one other thing I feel I should bring to your attention…"

Siegfried cut him off, "If it's about the girl that's following us I already know about her. Saw her last night on the rooftop." Siegfried had hoped that his nonchalance would impress and win some more loyalty from Luzifer but it seemed that it did not as the boy was unphased.

The boy merely continued as though Siegfried's words had been his own, "and I have a plan to deal with her."

Siegfried cast him a sidelong glance, "I hope its better then your last plan." Siegfried was about to tag on something even more bitterly sarcastic but decided against it, he should try to befriend this boy, doing otherwise would only make life more difficult for him.

" When we reach the town we split up. I was watching her last night and she was looking directly at my room the entire time and I believe she will follow me. That way not only will she try to attack my while I'm isolated, even if I loose she will not be able to get Soul Edge as you will have it." Siegfried thought for a moment. It seemed logical, and he supposed all those books that Luzifer carried with him must have taught him something.

"Alright." Siegfried nodded and they fell into silence as they approached the town.

* * *

The trading center was indeed of a greater population then the hamlet they had passed through the day before. The streets were filled to bursting with people and carts the lumbered through filled with chopped lumber or containers of salt from the sea. Luzifer and Siegfried came onto the main road from a ninety-degree angle and Luzifer went right while Siegfried went left. Luzifer pushed his way through the crowds of people, only stopping to snatch a small purse of gold that was just begging to be taken from a distracted merchant. After he had gotten his fill of being slammed into by people he ducked into an alley. Took him to a small clearing behind the some buildings. The clearing reeked of human wastes and looking up he noticed windows that people used to throw their…_mierda…_ out of the house and to the earth below where it decay and created the most pungent odor. As was only to be expected the grass grew tall and emerald-colored.

Luzifer needed only to wait a moment before the girl landed behind him, in a small area where green grass did not grow. He looked over his shoulder at her, not even bothering to turn around to face her. He looked her over. She had a torn green shirt that was barely held together by purple stitching and covered entirely too little of her body. Her arms were more adequately protected by long leather gloves that had the strangest purple tint. It was indeed feathers that Luzifer had seen around her collar, wrists, and thighs the night before and they were green like the plumage of no bird that Luzifer could recall from memory. She had tight green pants that were snug around her hip and had slights going down both thighs to the shins, which were wrapped in light greaves. She had an unusual shade of cerulean hair that had threads of green winding threw it. Her eyes had a lavender hue to their irises and her lips were as green as the rest of her cloths. She looked to be off an age with him, which was in the late throes of adolescence. Physically she was beyond attractive and, as his eyes pulled themselves away from her thanks to a quick aversion of his head, he could feel his lust squeaking in its little corner of his mind but he had grown resistant to it desires. The only thing that he let play on his consciousness was his self-loathing. Once, his abhorrence had gotten his emotions under control he turned around and marked the weapon in her hand. It was indeed circular with three evenly space fins with barbs that looked able to hook into the flesh and tear at the nerves.

"What do you want, wench?" Luzifer said arrogance dripping from his tongue.

She beamed a innocent smile at him, "I came to kill you and take Soul Edge!" she squealed with a childish glee the belied that deadly words that she spoke but the glee seemed fake. It was too over done to unreal, like someone trying to look happy when they had never felt happy in their life.._ Oh well, _though Luzifer, _at least she thinks I have Soul Edge._ "I'd say that you would also make a good host but my master said that descendents of Azazel could not be used as hosts. Pity! You look real strong too!" the last two sentences she said with an almost genuine pout of disappointment but again it was astonishingly fake..

Luzifer drew Glam and pointed it at the girl, "What do you mean a descendent of Azazal?"

She brushed off his question with a wave of her hand, "I don't know that's just what he said." She then moved her ring blade up and looked through the middle, "but come lets not talk of such boring subjects let's play!" she brought the weapon around in a horizontal slash at his head but he easily ducked beneath the blow.

They struck at each other for the longest time. Both were incredibly fast, with the girl only ever so slightly edging out Luzifer. But what little he lost in speed, he more then made up for in weapon reach. The girl, like Luzifer, relied on speed and individual strikes to defeat her opponent. Neither could truly gain a great advantage over the other, until…

Luzifer baited the girl in and she brought a vertical down that he easily sidestepped. The ring blade slammed into the ground and for that brief second was still. Luzifer thrust his sword through the ring blade and into the ground so that the girl could not bring its edge to bear. Luzifer then kick the girl sharp in the abdomen and she was knocked backward and to the ground. Luzifer removed his sword from the ring, let it fall to the ground, and stomped his foot through the middle of it, thus keeping it permanently out of her reach. She knelt in front of him ready to take the killing blow she deserved for her failure from his raised sword. He held the blade up but did not bring it down. Memories of his mother and Blasa bleeding in front of him came to his skull and he could not kill the girl. He could never kill a woman.

He stabbed the sword into the ground and kicked the ring blade away. The girl looked up at him, in shock that she was still alive but showing no fear of the possibility that she could still die. "Go and retrieve your ring blade and come again to kill me if you wish I don't care. Just do me a favor and leave me alone for the rest of the day." He then drew his sword from the ground and began to walk away.

The girl looked at him, her head cocked to one side quizzically, not knowing what to do in such a situation. Suddenly, an idea came to her, "My name is Tira. And no one will kill you but me!"

Luzifer glanced over his shoulder at the green girl named Tira, with the corpse of a smile on his lips, "My name is Luzifer. And no one will ever kill me."

Another chapter done. Tira truly joins the ranks of the main characters and we will be seeing a lot of her. The next chapter will probably be another week or so, it's a pretty heavy chapter if I do say so myself.

* * *

Also I want all of you to review! Even if you only say how much you hate me and that you want to kill me. Even you people who don't belong to the website can review as this will accept anonymous reviews. So I implore you all to review. 


	7. When Ice Breaks Rock

**Of Brothers and Angels**

**Chapter 5**

**When Ice Breaks Rock **

She sat at the bank of the Rhine watching as it continued its endless journey towards the sea. This was the river that, according to legend was the resting place for a great and powerful ring. Great and powerful, golden and tantalizing, dangerous and terrifying. This ring reminded her of someone. She was thinking of him again. She thought about him a lot and she hated him for it. For what he had done to her friends she hated him. For what she had done to her thoughts, her mind, she hated him. But there was something else squirming through her that she couldn't place. Every time she pondered it she could not come to a resolution as to what it was.

She knew whatever it was she had to be completely honest with herself about it. Se hated people that lied to themselves, deceived themselves to avoid a little pain. She had hated them since she was little more then a girl. It had all started when her father started cheating on mother with another women in the village. Everyone knew about, even her mother. But her mother I had lied to herself about it pretending he worked late every night or making some other excuses for his arrivals at home that were well after dark. It continued for years and it had tortured the young girl. She could see her mother wasting away, unable to sustain herself on her own self-deceptions. Her mother spent her lonely nights cry and sometimes the sound would make its way to the girl's room and she would curse her mother for weakness. She knew her mother could escape from this if she wanted to but the fact that she let this happen to her was unforgivable. What was worse was when her mother was done crying she would consol herself about how she didn't have enough faith in her husband and how she shouldn't let this get to her. It made the girl want to puke.

Finally, one day she confronted her mother about this. She told her mother that her husband _did _cheat on her and how everyone knew it, how she shouldn't take it meekly and how she should stop pretending like she didn't see what was patently in front of her face. Her mother had started at her for the longest time, her face blank and unreadable. And then, suddenly, like the quiet, snow swept mountain that suddenly burst forth into an avalanche, her mothers face twisted with hatred and she smacked her daughter. Her mother continued to beat her and the twisted matron shouted, "How dare you Jenell? How can you not have faith in the man that has fathered and reared you? How can you show him such disrespect for him? You are a shame to accuse him in such a way! You are a whore! The whore of Babylon!"

Jenell could see that, underneath the thick coat of hatred her mother had plastered over herself, a black core of pain. Deeply hidden, even from the women who possessed it, she had let it fester and her mother had rotted from the inside out and now was little more then a shell. This is the price that her mother's own lies had bought her. She had traded a temporary release from pain and responsibility for a hollow existence, a mere mockery of her former self.

Chased from her own home Jenell had run out to live the traveling life of a beggar and a thief, changing between the two occupations based on opportunity. She managed to survive but she was alone. She made some friends among other thieves and wanderers. With them she was able to waylay lone travelers by luring them in and ambushing them. That is until, of course…

She sighed and went back to watching the calming river at lapped at the banks. It was to late though; she had already started a string of thoughts that would bring her back to _him._ The day that she stopped traveling, he was the one who had ended it and there she was back to square one. She hated him so much! He was like an omnipresent bastard son of a demon and an angel. A demon in his obvious evil and an angel in his obvious good. He was a riddle with two answers that seemed mutually exclusive. They made you think that you had gotten the wrong two answers.

But she had to be honest with herself. So what was it that she felt? Looking at eddies that twisted into miniature whirlpools, spinning around and around aimlessly before collapsing into non-existence, she thought she knew. She hated him. She might have some vague confusion probably brought about by the boy's appearance (admittedly handsome, and cruelly, apathetically, fiendishly innocent).

She felt a brief respite when she came to that decision. That must be it. She must hate him. Why would she feel anything? Standing up she turned her back to the flowing water.

* * *

Luzifer had just finished relating to Siegfried the story of his fight with Tira. He had held back a number of details, such as her name, what she had said to him at the end of the fight, and the part about him being a descendent of Azazel. Otherwise, though it was a faithful and unembellished description of the events that had occurred. When, Luzifer told Siegfried that he had not killed the girl Siegfried did not seemed particularly surprised. Luzifer had always pegged Siegfried as empathetic and knowledgeable of the emotions of other and that confirmed it. Siegfried had predicted somewhere in his mind that Luzifer would have trouble killing women (or maybe people in general) and had been proven right. 

He had relayed this to Siegfried while they were walking on their way to the next town. Luzifer had spent most of last night in his room thinking. He was growing weak. Despair was eroding at him like rain on a cliff face. Only, instead of being worn smooth and beautiful he would break and crumble. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. His emotions were eating him alive.

He had tried to push away his thoughts by reading, but the pages only seemed stained with Blasa's blood. He tried to sleep but the silence only reminded him of how Blasa had not screamed when he had cut through her, hadn't screamed even when she realized she was going to die. The stars played a merry dance in his window, mockingly, and he wondered why Tira had decided to do what he had asked and not bother him for the rest of the day. Surely there was nothing staying her hand? No, she probably wanted to torture him and what greater suffering could be inflicted on a boy like him then to be synthetically kept alive by the mercy of others.

And that only served to remind him that for the second time in his life he had failed as a warrior. He had let his emotions get the better of him and he had granted mercy. He remembered the first time and the girl he had met. He hoped that she had stopped acting like a whore in order draw passersby into traps. Luzifer had always though acting weak was only for those who actually were weak. She probably had heeded his words, she seemed like a smart young women.

Luzifer only half-realized that he had talked down to her like she was younger then him when she was at least a couple years older.

He had looked at his moonlit reflection in a basin of wash water. He saw a late adolescent, whose form had taken the basic shape it would have in later years but had not yet set its more subtle features. There would still be change. The thought brought Luzifer a small inkling of hope that he could not precisely explain but comforted him nonetheless. There would still be a chance for Luzifer to change. But how would he change? Would it be a slow thing, a gradual shifting in his mannerisms. Or would it be a sudden breaking that would force his soul to reform or die out completely. Luzifer didn't care as long as it came. But it would never come for the face he had seen in the basin was the same one he would have seen a year before.

He had woken up the next day, physically exhausted but having a small emotional solace that he had not had in the longest time. He had sat on the edge of his bed for as long as he could and let his mind and body relax. Suddenly, Siegfried opened his door and walked in. At that point, Siegfried only knew that Luzifer had successfully beaten his opponent but knew no more. And the only reason Siegfried knew what little he did was by assumption that since Luzifer was still alive when they met back up at the towns' inn, he must have survived. That inn in this town was a much grander affair then the previous one, which had boasted only Siegfried and Luzifer and was of similar, though a two floor variant, construction to those houses around it. The inn they had been in at that moment was much more upscale then those adjacent structures, even to the extent of having a shingled roof, and had a larger congregation of travelers staying there.

Siegfried had walked up to the sitting Luzifer and gave him stiff punch to the chest, "Ready to go, Brother?" he said the last word with a slight change of tone that made Luzifer remember there were still pretending to be brothers.

Luzifer grinned sleepily and stood up. The two of them had left from the town on their way to the next, which was located along the Rhine River. They were still mostly wandering, trying to stay ahead of whoever might be pursuing them (whoever in addition to Tira, _speaking of which, I haven't seen her in a while. Is she still behind us?_). That's how he had found himself on this random road explaining the events of yesterday in as few words as he could.

They continued the rest of the walk in silence, as they usually did. Siegfried looked at the scenery, trying to let its natural beauty take his mind off his many sins, while Luzifer looked straight ahead, haughtily uncaring about the land around him. As far as Luzifer was concerned he had enough of his own affairs to worry about without taking time to think about the pathetic condition of his surrounding environs. Slowly the sun move across the sky as they moved across the ground and was half way from its apex to its crash when they are arrived at a town where they could crash that night.

Luzifer stood at the edge of the town for a moment. Siegfried continued for a moment before he noticed that Luzifer was no longer with him and stopped, turning to see what was holding him up. Luzifer let his gaze sweep across the bustle of rivermen, who took goods up and down the Rhine from here, and the traders who took the imports from the town inland and the exports from inland to the riverside. He was next to certain he had seen someone, someone he could vaguely recall. A face that had a made a brief but shaping touch on his life that he could not at that moment place. He shook his head and caught back up with Siegfried. It was probably nothing.

* * *

She had seen him! She had been quietly returning from the riverside to the tavern where she was to spend the night and she had caught a glint in the back of her eye. Sparing a brief glance she almost had not noticed Luzifer for he seemed not to stand out next to the glimmering and illuminating knight that he was walking with. She also had not recognized him immediately. His brown-blond hair was still scraggly and falling wispily over his face but this time it was far less mated and disheveled. Even though it was caked with a day's sweat and dirt it appeared to have been cleaned the night before. The last time she had seen him she could have sworn he looked like he had never even heard of the concept of using water to clean one's self. 

His clothes were also much more colorful though they had obviously seen months of travel. He hardly looked any older, which struck her as odd since it had been two years since she had seen him. In fact, physical he look no older, still an adolescent, towards the end of adolescence, but in his mid-teens no the less. She herself was only nineteen but he had looked almost slightly old then her before, not much more, but still it was there. Now he look like her junior except if you really look at him. If you did you would notice that he had the mannerism of someone far older then the body would indicate, the conservative, wise, arrogant, and evil way of walking that caught the eye of those who could pick up on such subtleties. The sword on his back was different, both larger and more ornate looking but she had no doubt it was only more dangerous then the one that had killed…

She slipped behind a building as soon as she saw him. She didn't want him to see her before she could get close. Her mind was moving at a thousand thoughts per second and not all of them were ones that she had given clearance to be there. He was distracting her again, muddling her mind with thoughts and feelings that were false. She still hated him, she must still hate him, right? She couldn't possibly feel anything else. She couldn't accept the very concept of not hating him.

She didn't know what she was going to do now that she had found him but whatever it was it would have to involve the boy alone. She would need to wait for the knight to go his own way so that she would have unrestricted access to the boy.

Just then the two men passed by the building she was hiding behind and she could stare at there backs through the people that occasionally offered up their bodies to the blocking of her view. She hadn't noticed this earlier but the two were incredibly similar. They both seemed to have weighted steps that sent shockwaves through the earth that they walked on and both had an otherworldly air about them. However, where Luzifer had his demonic innocence, the knight's was more angelic and holy. They looked like brothers.

She followed behind them at a distance using the crowd to keep from being noticed as she followed them. Suddenly, they stopped outside a tavern and they talked for a moment, more precisely it was the knight that did the talking as the boy merely nodded or shook his head to the mans words. After the paladin had finished, he walked into the inn and the boy started walking down the road. This was the opportunity that she had been waiting and hoping for.

She began to walk with lithe ground-devouring strides and she soon began to catch up with the boy. She overtook him in the center of the street as it passed a few blacksmith shops and the smell of sulfur and smoke kept all but those with business out, granting Jenell a little extra space. She stepped in front of him, causing him to instantly stop while his right hand shot to his sword. He said nothing, but looked somewhat dejected and depressed.

She smiled, but there was no mirth behind it, "I haven't seen you in so long." He began to back up but in his eyes there was no guilt, no remorse. It seems that what ever had been eating at him a moment before it was not the fact that he had kill all her friends. He had done something worse? Her head began to pound with emotions all banging to be set free. She couldn't focus and her mouth moved on it own accord, "You killed them all! All my friends and then you left me there!" She moved in and punched him square in the chest, less to hurt him then to relieve her pent up frustrations, " Left me their to that snobby bastard who tried to rape me! My life has been a living hell since then. Struggling day-to-day just to survive. Sometimes, going days without food, starving on the roadside. What kind of mercy is that? To leave me alive to a life of suffering!" By this time she had launched her fifth punch but she wasn't trying hard aim it hard and missed. Her momentum carried her forward, slamming her head into the boy's chest. She nestled it there and cried hard, she clung to him. This was the first time she had said anything like this to anyone, all her bottled up frustrations poured out. She couldn't understand her own words as they were distorted by his shirt and chest but somehow he heard every word. About her mother and father, her life as a lonely girl, and even some events that she didn't even know bothered her like when she had been punished in front of the congregation of her town's church for stealing the priest bible on a dare.

When she looked up at him she saw pain. Pure anguish was written into his face and all his guilt was brought forth as his out-of-focus yellow eyes stared into the distance. She then noticed that a number of people were staring at them, she felt her cheeks heat and she pushed away from him and began to walk away, still crying as she pushed through the gawking gatherers. Couldn't people mind their own business? That's when she heard the scream.

Feral and pathetic it scratched at her mind and she immediately looked at the boy who was holding his head in his hand. His knees had buckled and his back was arched as the scream tore into her thoughts. It could be heard for miles and at the distance she was at the sound was agonizing. Suddenly, the noise gained words, "WHY? Every time I try to help someone I only cause more pain! I grant mercy and bring misery! I kill those I care about!" His fist pounded the ground but the earth did not seem to mind enduring his seething outburst as he struggled to get his emotions under control again. That's when a few startled gasps could be heard through the stunned silent crowd, which was growing as people came to investigate the noise. The cause of the gasps revealed itself as a blacksmith's fire left its furnace and crawled along the ground towards the boy. Other fires appeared from all the other blacksmith shops that made up this section of the town and soon the covered him. Jenell watched in horror as the boy just knelt their hands on the ground and his chin digging into his chest as the flames baptized him. Her mouth was dry but surprisingly no scent of burning flesh pervaded her nostrils. She could hear shouts of witchcraft and demonic influence from the crowd but all she felt was concern. Concern for the boy. One shouter yelled out, "Its Luzifer!" and the boy reacted with a slight uplift of his head but then let it fall down. She didn't care if his name was Luzifer or whatever; all she cared about was…him.

She loved him. Guilt pulsed through her at the thought that she had been lying to herself but she didn't let it sink in as she turned her thoughts to figuring out a way to get him out of her before the people could overcome their fear of him and kill him. She called out to him, "I forgive you Luzifer!" He looked up at her his golden eyes were strangely illuminated by the glowing fire. Then he collapsed with a resonating thump and the fires gave out.

She ran up to him and knelt beside his unburnt body, which seemed frighteningly cool. The crowd began to scream for her to leave him alone before he killed her but she ignored them. That was when the knight from earlier burst through the crowd. Kneeling down next to her he grabbed the boy in one hand and held his massive sword in the other, warding off the crowd, causing them to move and grant him passage. She followed the knight as he made his way through the crowd, hoping that he was there to save Luzifer. The people who watched this were like dogs at by casting hateful glances at them as they passed, words were yelled about demon-lovers and Satanists. She whispered softly to the knight as they passed the last of crowd and broke in to a sprint leaving the town behind, "You're here to protect him right?"

The paladin looked at her askance through a shroud of blonde hair that partially covered his eyes, but he didn't reply initially. He looked back towards the town and let up on his run. She followed suit and asked why he was stopping. He barely paid her a moments attention as he went to walking, Luzifer still slung limp over his shoulder, "If they haven't started following us yet they never will, especially this close nightfall. People are suspicious by nature, to them the woods are full of spirits, they won't risk following a 'demon' in to the forest at night." He put a sarcastic emphasis on the word "demon" to show how much he agreed with their diagnosis. "Still we should get as far as we can before nightfall. They might try to follow us at daybreak. Nothing to serious they won't leave their fields untended to pursue a 'demon' in what they believe is his ancient home." He was walking away completely capable of leaving her alone if she didn't keep up on her own accord.

As she caught up to him, she began thinking again about how, even after she had promised not to lie to herself she had. She was even weaker then her mother who she had scorned to no end for being pathetic in the face of pain. Looking back she could see other times that she had skirted away from the truth when it was most convenient. Like when she had tried to steal the priest's bible so long ago. She had always blamed those who had dared her to do it for here actions, she couldn't accept that she had actually wanted to do it. That had always been her problem, in retrospect, she could never accept her own emotions and had always come up with an excuse as to why she felt the way she did.

* * *

Siegfried looked over at her and saw her moody feelings of depression softened toward her, he couldn't be, in good conscience, so apathetic towards his fellow humans when they seemed to be suffering. Not like his brother. The knight almost laughed, he was even starting to think of Luzifer as a brother. He wanted to get the girls thoughts off of whatever depressive things were keeping her down. He felt that she might, in some way, be important to Luzifer and he would not like it if he let her stay so melancholy. So Siegfried decided to ask her a question, "How do you know, my brother?" 

She looked at him with pained eyes but for a brief moment she was distracted from her inner chastisement to ask Siegfried a question, "You're his brother? When I knew-er saw him he was always alone. Did he find you or something?"

Siegfried was about to ask her to answer his question but he thought better of it. The girl's past with Luzifer might be the cause or a part of her depression and it would be best if he avoided letting her think of that. But first he needed to think of answer to that. Well, he could give a basic answer to the question 'no' but he needed to drag this conversation out. That require coming up with a reason. Was it that he felt some bond with a fellow warrior who let himself be tortured by the acts that he had commit? They both had dark pasts that became their obsessions. Siegfried knew he, himself, would not be happy until he had earned forgiveness in the eyes of the world. Luzifer, while in having similar view, did not believe in anything outside himself and thus seemed to be looking for self-redemption or death. Siegfried wasn't too sure on that point. But the silent boy obviously wanted something badly enough to keep living, even if no one, including he, knew what it was. They were brothers in that. Living for no other reason then to prolong their existence, when they didn't particularly like their existence.

"We are not brothers by blood or anything of that nature but we think alike." Siegfried said, thinking over what he was saying carefully so he didn't misspeak. "Both have similar enough past", _even if I don't know what his past is, _"and we both have the same goals. We are more brothers in arms and mentality, then any literal brotherhood. But then brotherhood by blood is meaningless, its nothing but a bond of luck so I suppose that makes the entire concept of brotherhood meaningless, which, in a way, makes this entire conversations was meaningless."

She looked at him briefly then back at Luzifer and when her gaze lighted on the boy she spoke with eyes unconscious of her words, "Nothing is meaningless but, then, that makes everything meaningless." And for a long time Siegfried was confused.

* * *

The flame was down to the barest embers but the air still had summers warmth and the pre-full moon gave enough light that she could clearly see Luzifer tossing in front of her. Her attention was drawn away when a twig snapped in the distant but what ever it is was keeping silent or had moved on. _Probably an animal._ She turned back to Luzifer and put a hand to his for hand only to feel wetness as he continued to sweat profusely. 

He'd been having nightmares for hours and Siegfried had long since gone to sleep. She couldn't sleep, partly because of worry but mostly because of guilt. She had done this to him. She must have. What she said to him must have damaged his keystone brick to such an extent that he could not stay conscious while dealing with whatever mental problems it had unleashed. Now he was thrashing in what only seemed like sleep, she doubted any rest was involved.

Why had it happened like this? Because she couldn't accept her own emotions. Had she figured out the truth and not lied to herself she could have told him what she felt and he wouldn't have blamed himself for her problems. She put a hand to her head. She couldn't believe that she, after all she had always said about lying to yourself, had done it. She was even worse then her mother. Her mother had only harmed herself, Jenell had harmed Luzifer, another. No, not just another, the only person in this rotten world she even cared about. She was pathetic. All she did was cause harm to others. It was her fault that she had brought Luzifer into that ambush, her fault that he had been forced to kill her friends. It wasn't his fault, it was self-defense. You can't blame someone for killing those who attack him, can you? However, you can fault someone who lets, in fact causes, the events that result in the deaths to occur. Incompetence is not an excuse. There isn't an excuse for anything, everything was your own fault and if something you didn't foresee happens you didn't look enough into the future. She had failed so many times, she realized now. So many little failures she had never before counted. Each a boulder tied to her neck, weighing her to the ground. Again her lying came to her, again she thought of the harm it had cause and she leaned heavily against the twitching Luzifer as she spiraled deeper in despair. A loud minority of her demanded release from pain and, against the implore of her rational mind, her hand eased towards the knife that hung at her belt and as she did the sounds of the forest seemed to die. It was her, Luzifer and the knife that now hovered in front of her, pointed at her breast.

She froze motionless, sitting over Luzifer like a maiden desiring her own sacrifice for the return of the one the lay before her, only this was tinged with her own sorrow and madness. Every rational faculty she still possessed screamed for her to set the stiletto aside but her weakness called for her complete submission to the travails of her life. The two forces inside claw and stabbed at one another neither side gained the advantage. Her muscles remained tense but motionless, forced into a rigidity not unlike rigor mortis. Slowly, the emotions began to recede, their endurance spent and her muscles relaxed.

It was at just that moment that Luzifer woke up.

He bolted up right, tearing himself from the nightmare he had been encased in. His rising chest slammed into the pummel of the knife and her relaxed muscles weren't prepared to stop it from entering her chest. How ironic, she had always thought that people only bolted asleep in stories.

* * *

She was leading against him and bleeding profusely. He had just woken up and suddenly she collapsed into his arms with a knife logged in her chest. She was still alive and conscious but he could hear in her breathing that she was bleeding internally. The way the air sounded coming up laden with blood clawed at him. She spoke in a deathly whisper that tickled the hairs of his neck, "Its alright, Luzifer. I forgive you and," she coughed up blood onto his neck, "I…love you." With that her chest stilled and her breath no longer tingled against his skin. 

Those last words hung in the air. _Again! Not again! Never again! Again! Again! Why did she commit suicide? I drove her to it! It took everything away and then spared her life! What was she going to do with her life when left with nothing? Again! I drove her to it! Again! Don't scream! Again! Not again! No more weakness ever! Not again! Bottle it up! _The he lost all mental consciousness but his body remained awake functioning on instinct.

"Siegfried!" he yelled, his voice cold and harsh in the still night. He heard Siegfried who had been sleeping through the entire ordeal finally get up and stand a moment as his eyes took in the night. The knight then made his way to Luzifer and, as soon as his eyes could take in the details of Luzifer and Jenell's forms, he gasped in sudden shock, a gasp, which was soon eaten by the silence of the night. It was Luzifer who was the first to speak, "She committed suicide." Pain oozed from his lips like so much mental blood but it was blood that was thick and chilled.

"How? Why?" Siegfried asked his eyes spoke the pity that was hidden underneath the obvious concern for the events that had occurred. Pity for his brother that opportunity had allowed him to mask.

"I don't know, she didn't say anything" Luzifer lied, his face taut and straight, lips moving robotically.

"Are you okay? Do you need my help? Hell!", Siegfried managed to choke out.

"Fine. Yes, start preparing to leave, I don't sleep will be occurring and more tonight. I'm going to go bury her. I have to." Luzifer knew in his mind that suicides should not be buried since suicide, according to dogma was a sin. But then all that could go to hell. Jenell would want to be buried and that's all that mattered, besides he had lost his faith years ago, or, in his mind, gained his sanity.

Siegfried began preparing to leave hardly a thought going to what he was doing, when he heard Luzifer say something. "Your lucky Siegfried, you have strength of mind. I don't. I am weak and for that I have died." Siegfried looked up to see Luzifer disappear into the darkness of the night.

* * *

Not real proud of this chapter but I suppose it could be a whole lot worse. Next chapter will only have a minor part with Siegfried and Luzifer as I'm going to turn my attention to the "minor" characters who we haven't heard from in a while. You didn't think I forgot them did you? Hopefully, as the storyline progresses it will get a bit less Luzifer-centric and attention to characters a bit more evenly spread. Sorry this took so long. 

Any way read review and all that rot.


	8. Accepting the Rock's Gospel

**Accepting the Rock's Gospel**

**or**

**The Winding of Threads **

By Breaeden Swordwind

Memories were horrible. Tira had always hated them. They ganged up on her when she tried to sleep and made her remember things that she would give the world to forget. Sometimes she wasn't even aware that these memories were playing on her mind, it was all tucked away safely in her subconscious. But they were there and only the more poignant for not being seen or heard. They pervaded her dreams, revealing their heads, bursting through the surface like worms from with a rotten apple. And this was such a night as that. She dreamed and sweated profusely from the weight of the memories.

"What is your purpose for existence? Why did God decide that your pathetic existences were worth putting down upon his holy creation known as earth?" the instructor said to the three students that were sitting cross-legged in front of him. One of them was Tira, her blue mane of set by her gaudy green garb. She was much younger, hardly bridging into adolescence. Her mind was empty of thought, as it always was, void of feeling and knowledge. Only memorization and instinct drove her.

The three students spoke as one "We are to kill enemies of the church those allowing the Holy See to act with less interference from heretics as well as saving the souls of the demagogues from further sin. Our second directive is to find and eliminate all surviving Grigori."

The teacher smiled softly to himself and gaze with pride upon his three students. The three apprentices did not look at one another. They were oblivious to their fellows and treated them as though they did not exist. They were assassins they had no friends, they were instruments of His will, so they had been told, and that their entire lives were a constant striving to be the best servant they could be. None of them smiled, to have pleased their temporal master was meaningless for he would die and rot like all other but there were things that would last for eternity if one dared to reach for them.

They were all sitting in a small room lit by a few torches that gave the room an overbearing heat but didn't seemed to drive away the darkness that devour them. Three torches each slowly withering as the blackness encroached upon them slowly they began to fade, little by little, becoming no more then sparse glowing embers. The students could see nothing save their teacher who still bore a sick pride upon his feature and looked, smirking, at them like small lambs. The master asked, "And what, young ravens, are your names?"

No thought just an answer was elicited, "We have no names, we are merely the Birds of Passage, guiding the sinful to Charon's ferry."

"And why do you kill?"

"To saves sinners from the further committing of sin by releasing them from this world of sin. We grant them salvation by baptizing them in their own blood. We guide them from the temptation of darkness to the purity of the light."

"Good, good, good! I do believe that-" the master began but was cut off when the door to the room opened, flooding the void with the half light of burning torches. It was a messenger and he walked up to the teacher and whispered something into his ear so low that even Tira could not hear what it was he said. It must have been good news though as a smile began to spread across her master's lips as the words enter his ear. After the messenger had left and the room was once again in total darkness the teacher spoke once more, "I have received good news, my ravens. It seems that one of the cardinals will be coming to inspect our humble order and that one of you will be given the honor of demonstrating the prowess of the new generation for him." Tira's interest was picked and her ears quivered slightly waiting for whatever news he would choose to drop for them. "Now I want you to all go to opposite corners." The ravens without hesitation did as they were told. Though there was no light they did not need to feel around, the sound of their own footfalls bouncing off the walls was enough to guide them to their respective corners. They stayed facing the corners and waited, "The last one to loose consciousness will be given the honor of "performing" for the cardinal upon his arrival."

Silence engulfed the room and Tira waited. Silently, she felt no trepidation about the coming battle, no sense of disgust that she would have to severely injure her fellow servants of God, and least of all did she feel fear. She felt nothing; she was a void, an empty shell without feeling. If she had wanted to she could have cast stones into her mind and she would never hear them hit the sides or bottom of her skull. They would have fallen forever, never hitting her conscious mind's cavernous depths.

The teacher's knuckled rasped against the stone wall and she immediately moved sidestepping away along the side of the wall. She could not rush the center yet, if she did she could be surrounded by the other two, she might get stuck between them and she would instantly become to most logical and easy target for both of her fellows. She listened for any footfalls that might aid here in finding her comrades but alas they were as good at stealth as she and they would not make such a mistake.

Suddenly she heard the other two make a move for the center both squared off against one another and she knew she had it won. They fought each other, neither gaining the advantage. And neither would because at the proper times she grabbed both their heads and smashed them together as hard as she could. She was latter told that they had died from the wound, but no one was bothered by this. Least of all her.

"Effective and efficient, using no more effort then was necessary, and of course relying on the foes mistakes to save work and risk for you. Perfectly done I could not ask for more. It will truly be a joy to watch the demonstration. I am sure I don't need to tell you what that involves." Oh no, he didn't. Tira was almost looking forward to the cardinal's visit now. The master continued, "He will be here in three days time. I want you to be prepared to be at your peak for the demonstration. Any slip ups and I can not guarantee your survival."

Her training intensified over the next couple of days. It hadn't exactly been light and easy before, the average day going from dark in the morning to dark at night. But now they worked her faster and longer, giving her hardly four hours to sleep each night. She would walk the small room she slept in and immediately collapsed exhausted. The room wasn't even her height wide or long and some times she would hit her head in her sleep causing her to awaken and loose even more precious rest.

They particularly focused on increasing her aptitude with her allotted weapon, the ringblade. She had always shown potential with the weapon and was well remarked on for her creative use of its unique shape. Using the hole in the center for grapples, hooks, and parries that perplex those who were used to more standard weapons.

Soon the day approached though, faster then she would have imagined. She found herself on the top of one of the many twisting walls that made up a rather large labyrinth. Its entire size was four acres and she was dead in the center. The labyrinth was square and at each of the corners was a large gate with a rusting iron grating. And in the middle of each side was a wide arching outlet that led to the surface. The surface since the entire maze was located underground with the roof no more the ten feet above her head. Along the rim of the maze were observation galleries and a particular sumptuous veranda over the northern exit. That was were the cardinal was sitting and talking with the leaders of the Birds of Passage, the holy order that she had belonged to for her entire life. If she was capable she might have felt pride.

She could hear their conversation. They were talking about the weak nature of the new pope and his annoying desire to reform the church and put an end to indulgences and other fragrant abuses. The cardinal laughed easily, "I swear he's almost as much an annoyance as Luther himself." The leader of the Birds of Passage, a man with graying hair and a somewhat cold disposition nodded respectfully to the cardinal. The cardinal's red cape and vestments were pure silk and he had a gold-leaf staff as well as several bejeweled rings. He was also astonishingly fat. His robe seemed big enough to cover two men and he was still bursting at the seams. As he laughed rolls of his fat crashed together like cresting waves. The fat though did not soften his visage, the way his plump eyebrows almost covered his eyes so that one could not see them mad him seem incredibly menacing and his laughed sounded heartless.

Eventually the Grandmaster of the Birds of Passage and the cardinal stopped with the idle banter and the grandmaster raised his hand and the four iron-grate doors in the maze's corners opened. She knew what would happen, out of one of the gates would come some random heretic or pagan or other undesirable and she would have to find him and kill him before he escaped through one of the exits. Tira did not know which of the gates had held the victim and there were a thousand paths that he or she could take through the labyrinth. If the heretic made to one of the exits his was saved from death and merely exiled to the Saracen lands. There he or she would probably die and short order. There had been bad blood between Saracens and Europeans ever since the crusades.

Normally there was one release from each corner and she had to kill at least one or two but now it would be tougher she had a large chance of being wrong if she just guessed so she would need to play this strategically.

She jumped from wall to wall. She knew every path had to go near the center so if she watched the core of the labyrinth carefully she would be able to catch and kill her opponent simply enough. She continued circling for about ten minutes when she heard a sound, feet pounding the ground flat in a mad dash and for an exit. It reverberated through the entire maze and the echoes made it hard to accurate place but she pursued its approximate location. Faster and faster she moved as she realized it was getting dangerously close to the exit. Finally she saw him. He was a young man in his prime with a worn and tattered shirt and long brown pants. He was about to pass through the exit over which the cardinal and grandmaster watching. She hurled her ringblade, her precious Aiselne Drossel at the man. It looked like it was going to go wide when it hooked in and embedded itself in the back of him just as he crossed the invisible barrier of the exit.

The grandmaster leaped from the balcony to a wall of the labyrinth in way that seemed to go against his half-gray hair. He hopped easily down to the exit and looked at the body of the heretic and shook his head. Looking over his shoulder he spoke with a commanding tone, "You failed". Suddenly, every assassin on the galleries leaped onto labyrinth and ran to capture her. Tira didn't fight it though, she just let them drag her away to the surface and place her head on the block where thousands of other failures had met their end. She was too much in shock to even consider resisting.

Not at the fact she had failed, she accepted that easily enough. What shock was that inside her head something had will her with sense of sickness. It made the corner of her lips down turn, the joint of her neck weaken causing her head to nestle itself into her chest and made her legs feel like they would buckle under her weight. Not to long after that as her head rested on the wood that would soon be covered with her blood it disappeared and it would be years and months of tutoring before she felt its like again.

The grandmaster took his place beside the block with her blood coated Aiselne Drossel in his hand. Without further ceremony her lifted it into the air, preparing to use her own weapon to end Tira's life. That's when it happened. A glow filled the sky and it would later be known as the Evil Seed. The assassins of the Birds of Passage stood mesmerized by the surging spectacle in the sky. The way the light from it hit the objects in her view made them all look sinister even the more innocuous things like a tree or a blade of grass.

Once it was over all hell broke loose.

Everyone started killing one another. It was once gigantic melee and Tira was caught in the middle. She rolled off the chopping block and lay prone on the ground. No one seemed to pay her any mind as the covered her and the grass with each other's blood. Suddenly the grandmaster's face fell right in front of her not an inch away. His eyes were already starting to glaze; a knife protruding from his back and still clutching his hands was her Aiselne Drossel. She grabbed the ring blade and fought her way free from the chaos.

She traveled for the longest time. She had no direction, no desires to steer her along in life. When your life has been built around doing what you are told, how do you deal with freedom? Sometimes she would find her body releasing the contents of her stomach when she though about that but she did not know why her body would react like that to a mere thought.

She had been bred to grant redemption by blood and so as she passed through the world she killed as she went. It gave her a sensation that tasted delicious and she had always been told that it was just to kill people as it prevented them from committing further sins against humanity. She never though why it was just what she had always been taught and never had she felt a desire to do anything else, so she kept killing.

It was a month later that she was wondering wounded through the streets of an ordinary city. She had decided to attack a group of drunks for the stimuli their deaths would bring her but two of them not only been sober but skill warriors. She had killed them all but she was loosing a lot of blood from the wounds they had given her. Her knees gave out and her left hand found the mud and supported her while her right clenched close wound on waist. She was feeling dizzy and sick. As she lost consciousness two pairs of hands grabbed her.

She woke up and found herself in bed. She didn't know where or whose it was and looking around she also noted she was in a small room. It wasn't cramping but it was intimately compressed and there was little furniture outside of the bed. A small foot chest inhabited a corner and that was all.

The wounds she had taken were covered with fragile scabs but she could not afford the take the time to let the skin grow over them for she did not trust who ever owned this house. She didn't trust anyone. All people were sinners, herself included.

The door to the room was closed so Tira slipped out of bed to find herself in bed clothes. She had never worn anything like these which were of wool to keep out the cold. She had always preferred to sleep in her own cloths and not bother with the waste of changing. She also did not see her Aiselne Drossel any where and she could no just leave without her ring blade. Moving as quietly as she could she walked up to the door. She had no idea who had brought her here or why so she could not take enough precautions until she had gotten her ring blade and left. Getting clothes that were more battle ready also took a priority.

Looking out the gap between the door and the wall but she could not make out anyone in the adjacent room Quickly and quietly she opened the door. She gave the room an brief glance to make sure no one was there and moved on. There was a window on the opposite wall and from that she could discern that this family had some wealth own a two-floor house. Not riches but better then most. There was a closet in the corner and from it she was able to retrieve some clothes, which would be better for traveling. She ripped off the wool nightgown and quickly rushed into a blue tunic and a pair of brown leather pants. While changing she could feel just how tender her wounds still were. No Aiselne Drossel yet but the search would continue.

Opening another door revealed a stairway and she descended down it. As she entered the bottom she glanced to the right but heard a gasp to her left. She turned on her heel and was instantly set to kill who ever it was with her bare hands.

It was a woman who had seen middle age pass her by. Her black hair had a few strand of gray running through it and the corners of her mouth had wrinkles around that were the only remnant of a thousand smiles. Her brown eyes were wide and her hands were covering her mouth. The women spoke through her hands with a kindly aging voice, "Oh my! I thought you were still asleep! Are you alright?"

The women began to approach and Tira jumped back to regain some distance. With her landing she felt a wound reopen around he calf and blood trickled down her leg.

The woman stopped advancing and put out her palms in a gesture of peace, "Please I didn't mean to startle you but I do not believe that you are in any condition to be jumping around. Here I'll take you back up to bed where you can rest." Tira hesitated as the one-day crone began to near her. Instinct told her to stay and rest so that she could leave later but something intangible told her to run.

The only thing she could think to say was her first concern, "Where is Aiselne Drossel? Where is my weapon?" Without that weapon how could she redeem people and get that sweet ecstasy that only being an almighty redeemer could provide?

"Don't worry about that, child. Now we need to get you back up to bed. "

Little more then a month passed. The family had taken to Tira and when they learned she had no family they adopted her. The family consisted of the old woman and her husband who was a member of the Blacksmith's Guild and had some dealings with muscling out the upstart individual blacksmith's who tried to go against the guild. They also had grandson who lived with them and whose parents had died due to disease shortly after he was born.

Living with the family was a strange experience. They would often smile and laugh when certain things were said or done but at other times they would pout and cry. There seemed to be a correlation between how good the event was and how much they smiled. There was a similar relationship between how bad an event was and how much they cried. When the boy skinned his knees he had lain on the ground sobbing but when his grandmother picked him up he stopped crying and by the end of having the wound washed the boy even showed a small smile. Tira didn't understand what caused them to smile like that.

She had been feeling alone for sometime since flee from her order. She had gradually come to realize there was absolutely no one like her in the world. Before she might have been indifferent to her fellow assassins but at least they were similar to her. Now, however, she was unique and being unique and special was not a burden she wanted to bear. Maybe if she could be like this people and smile when good things happened and frown when times were bad she would be less of an individual. It was either that or servitude but when she tried to convince the family to make her a slave they wouldn't listen to her.

She tried but no matter what happened to her she was never inclined to move her features in response. It must not be subconscious, she determined, and so whenever even the smallest good happened she laughed and jumped around in fake jubilation. When a daily tragedy struck she acted moody and bitter. But it was all fake and overdone. Many people began to believe that she was crazy.

She continued to kill though, throughout her life with the family. She found Aiselne Drossel within a large chest in the houses attic and every night she would go out and kill the thieves and women of the night to save their soul from their continued sin then returned home and slip the Aiselne Drossel back into the chest. This continued for several months.

One day, the family asked Tira to watch over their grandson while they were out for a few hours. Tira had never been trusted to watch over the boy alone and so this was a great investment of faith on the part of the family. Tira accepted the charge without emotion and cool determination to see that to boy was safe. However, she was not able to contain the boy's energy through words and gestures alone and she did not believe that the family would take kindly to a use of force. The boy ran around and ran around.

He was dashing around upstairs when finally Tira decided to give up. She turned her back on the boy and suddenly, heard something fall crashing down the stairs. Bolting to the top of the stairs, she looked down only to see the boy in a mangled heap unconscious on the floor. She internally she was calm but acted like she were distraught. The door to the street opened, causing Tira to actually feel something gnawing at the inside of her at the prospect of having to explain to the adults what had transpired.

When the saw the boy on the floor the women gave a shriek and ran to the boy while the man tried to extract from Tira what had happened. The boy began to come around but no sooner her had he then the wife began berating Tira on her lack of responsibility. The father added his own criticisms to the mix so that Tira was soon wreathing under the couple's thumb.

She felt deep inside her belly a feeling she had not felt since she had failed to kill the peasant before he crossed the line out of the maze. It made her feel worthless and subhuman. Her necked bent and she could not hold the gaze of either her elders. She didn't like this feeling. It was worse then painful. It was like being devoured alive by something you couldn't see, but you could still feel it grasping your heart as it rammed you down its throat. She never wanted to feel this again, no, she was a good helper. She didn't mean to fail again, she wouldn't fail again. _NOOOO! _

For a moment she blacked out and when she came the grandparents were dead on the ground, their life snuffed out with the precise hands of an assassin. The boy was still lying on the floor in shock but began to crawl away, frantically hoping to escape the girls clutches. _No, _thought Tira, _You made me do this boy! You will not soon escape! _

The family was found later that week killed mercilessly with no signs of forced entry or intrusion, No one knew who the murderer was.

She knew now she could not live with people as their equal. She was too different. The only way to snuff out her individuality and become nothing more than a number was to become a slave. No one cared about slaves and she would be able to finally be able to commit suicide of character.

She still tried to feel though. To become more like everyone else and have their emotions, but she failed and could only manage a overdone facsimile. It became second nature to fake it and soon enough she became lost in her sea of conscious emotions and unconscious thoughts. All most to the point of no longer being human.

One day, she heard rumors of a knight in azure armor who traveled the countryside slaughtering men, women, and children. She also heard rumors that the knight stole the souls of those he slew and on the spot. Instantly she knew she would serve that man. Who better to serve the someone who freed so many from the endless torment of hell by killing them and absorbing their souls?

When she woke up she could not recall, consciously, many of these memories. Her mind protected her from their conscious burden only let them play where she could not recall them.

She had been following the boy and a knight for sometime now. The boy had fought her not to long ago and she was amazed to find that there was someone stronger and more capable then herself. She would kill him eventually though. But one thing intrigued her. When she had been about to be killed by him, or so she thought, she had felt that feeling in her stomach that made her feel weak and pathetic. Maybe that was an emotion? If so then maybe that boy could teach her how to feel them. It was cause for thought.

The good part is that it did not conflict with her master's orders. He had merely said to continue following the path of his "master". She didn't know which of the two was the master that hers had referred to but it didn't matter to her, all she cared about was that she was supposed to track them while her master looked for Soul Edge and its fragments.

* * *

Abelard entered a medium sized trading town and instantly noticed something amiss. He was used to crowds in these places, going to wherever their business took them but never had he seen so many people just standing and talking. The entire town seemed to be in an uproar and Abelard was immediately curious as to what had caused it. If the Lord smiled on him it might even be the ones he was looking for.

His feet were weary from the constant travel and his stomach famished from the poor meals but he did not let it bother him. Abelard kept firm in his mind the maxim that He would provide. He entered the crowd and asked the first person he came to what was happening that everyone would be talking. The man looked at him and responded, "Well, traveler, a boy came not yesterday. He could manipulate the flames of Hell and according to the people he was carried off by the Black One himself. There are even tales of a succubus who traveled with him out of the town. What times are these that demons walk the earth so freely?"

A woman who was standing next to them pitched in, "Bad times 'ndeed. 'specially with some of the other things that are 'appening. I 'ere tell that there are no births but that they are still. The demons have grown so strong because of our sinful decadence with the Old Church that we are now vulnerable to 'aving are souls, stolen away while still in the womb. And it's only going to get worse! You 'ear about the fighting that's started in the north? Seems that the Duke of Brandenburg is moving forces to the north and Hamburg whispers of opposing him."

"Bah that's just rumor…" the voices faded away as Abelard continued through the crowd. So the boy had passed through here. At least he was still on the right track.

* * *

Jenell ducked behind the remains of broken wall. She was breathing heavily and rivulets of sweat were making there way down from her temples. They had been chasing her for at least an hour, worst part was that she didn't know who they were. All she could discern was that they were men with wings of ivory fire.

She didn't know where she was either. Suddenly, after the knife she was going to use to commit suicide with had found its place in her bosom because of an innocent collision with Luzifer; she had appeared here with an amulet around her neck and weird men chasing after her. An ancient city seemed to lie around her, dead and decaying from years of disuse. Many of the buildings had fallen in and streets were littered with rubble. The wind that blew through the necropolis was a sirocco of dust and little else. Occasionally, during brief moments of rest such as this one, she would catch a glimpse of a great mountain, which on its ascendant peak bore the most massive temple ever seen by man or, for that matter, woman.

She had little time to dwell on it though, as she had to keep all her wits focused on staying ahead of her pursuers for another few minutes. One of the winged men passed over head, his great, white, burning pinions flapping as he stayed aloft. She stood deathly still and prayed to whatever god would listen that it would pass over and not notice. It did not but no sooner had it then she could her footsteps coming from behind her. She ran from the wall and slipped behind a large rock. At the base of the boulder, partially covered by the stone itself was a door that seemed to lead into the ground. However the boulder covered the handle and opening it did not seem a possibility so she did not pay it any attention.

The two angels drew closer and closer and began to walk around the stone to see the other side. When they looked though she was gone, and neither of them believe she could have slipped through the half-covered door on her own without breaking it.

They were, in many respects, right. The door had opened from the inside and someone had grabbed her leg and pulled her in. Quickly shutting the door behind her, the person covered Jenell's mouth and held her still. Once, the men had passed Jenell began to squirming out of the persons gripped and in the process of being held tight discerned that her capture was a woman. The woman let her go. "Shhh. Don't worry I'm not going to hurt you. I saw you were being chased so it decided to grabbed."

Jenell was not persuaded by that, "How did you know? Why? Who are you?"

"These tunnels go to many places and some have views of the surface which those not actively searching for them on the surface cannot see. And even if they did they would not see me or have a way to get into the tunnels. The reason, I helped you was because it was the same with me. One moment, a boy was holding me in his arms begging me not to die and the next I was running away from fire-winged men with this strange amulet around my next." She then pointed to the talisman around her next and the two sigils that hung from it. The first sigil was like a triangle point down and from the top most corners were two lines that went through the center and then crossed out of the triangle At the very tip of the triangle was a V. The other was an A inscribe over a G.

"And my name? You may call me Blasa."

* * *

_By Hephaestus, this place is a mess! _Sophitia thought as she entered yet another town in similar condition as the last. Everyone was walking around, going about there business normally. Children played in the streets, some were having a game of tag and another group was taking turns trying to see how far they could hit a rock with a stick. Women were gossiping in there little huddles and some carpenters were carrying a load of wood to a new house that was being built across the street from their workshop. A merchant was buying a load of crops from a farmer and there was not anger between them. The merchant was not trying to exploit the farmer and the farmer was not feeling exploited. All taken together it was a pastoral scene of a small town near the border between Germany and the Ottoman Empire's holding of Greece.

On the surface at least.

Everyone had one of two badges sewn onto the chest of his or her shirt. The two badges were either R or P. In other places, the exact letters might be different but they always had the same result. The creation of a thinly veiled war.

The children who played only played those with the same letter as them and if one of the opposite letter came close then they would throw rocks at him. The women were similarly segregated and when those of the forbidden letter passed they would go silent and stare daggers at the new target of their day's bittersweet talk. The carpenters were all Ps and the merchant and farmer were both bearing Rs. The merchant would not deal with Ps or if he did he would offer poor prices.

The entire town was an open jar of naptha, if even the slightest spark were to touch it the village would burst into an unquenchable fire that the water used to placate it would cause it to burn brighter.

A few towns back Sophitia had asked what the letters meant. In that town the letters were C and P. She asked a man and he said that the Cs were Catholics (he had included some less then flattering terms along with that as he was a P) and Ps were Protestants. He then asked which she was a part of she had answered that she was neither. The man continued to press her for her alignment and when she continued to hold to her silence the man yelled that she was a heretic. She had to run for hours before the town gave up on getting itself a scapegoat to make both factions feel a little bit better about themselves.

This town, being dangerously close to the border of another country and one of a different religion at that, was surrounded by a large wooden wall with two gates on either side so traveling traders could go through both ways and continue on their way. She had come through one end and wanted nothing more then to leave this place so that she could get on her way.

When she arrived at the opposite gate, she was unpleasantly informed that as of five minutes ago all roads out of the town were closed by official order of the mayor. Apparently, there had been a fight between members of the two factions and they did not want the culprits escaping. _Hephaestus save me.

* * *

_

Siegfried looked over at Luzifer. After he had come back from burying the girl they had left. Siegfried had noticed that Luzifer was holding something in his hand, a knife. The girl's knife. Luzifer promptly put the knife onto the belt around his waist, on the right side of his hip. Siegfried knew that since his left hand was dead it would be difficult to draw from the right hip. Somehow, though, Siegfried didn't think Luzifer was going to use it.

Now they were traveling along the road. The day was noticeably cooler then the previous few but Siegfried didn't seem to notice it. Neither did Luzifer, who was walking with his eye closed as though he did not need to see in order to walk the path they were treading.

They stopped at a river that ran through the woods to drink the cold water that flowed through it. Siegfried drank just enough of the chill water to sustain him. Luzifer, however, drank deep of the half frozen liquid. Siegfried knew what the boy felt as he drank. He had done it once himself.

_Siegfried drank at the pond and feeling the icy waters him he smiled and drank more. He kept drinking till his burning heart became frozen and solid. Cold and dead to the world around him. He accepted the blazing sensation of chill water into his chest and could feel it lingering there._

It was later that day that Siegfried, along with his cadre of thieves known as the Schwarzwind, ambushed a caravan of soldiers returning from the crusades. Siegfried walk amidst their victims screaming out, "Leave none alive to tell the tale!" One man stumbled out in front of him and begged Siegfried for his life but Siegfried cut off the man's head. Hefting the head up he howled his bloodlust out into the night to be absorbed by his subordinates.

_The moon came out from behind the clouds and gazing at the severed head, strangely looking not unlike a skull due to the effect of the pale moonlight, realization and recognition struck Siegfried with equal force. _

_This was the head of his father._

That was all that Siegfried could remember of that night. When he had woken up he believed that someone else had murdered his father. So painful had idea of him killing his father been he could not let his conscious mind know of it. He eventually regained his memory of killing his father but only after Soul Edge had goaded him along as its host under the belief that it would resurrect his father. Still, Siegfried was glad he did not have to remember how insane he must have been that night, after he killed his father, to reshape his mind into believe someone else had decapitated his father.

So much pain was tied to drinking too deep of the freezing waters. Luzifer stood up and opened his eye to look at Siegfried. And those eyes were cold and dead.

* * *

Please review it make me a happy Breaeden. You want me to be a happy Breaeden, right? So you will review…pretty please. I live off of your reviews so please review. 


	9. The Threads That Bind

**The Threads That Bind**

**By Breaden Swordwind **

Sorry that this chapter took so long to get up but I have been quite busy and somewhat lacking in inspiration for a while now. School has pretty much burnt me out. However, its almost over so I should be able to get back to work in a bit. Anyway read and review as always and of course ask any questions you may have of me.

Luzifer had never felt like this before. It was a perfect chill that had descended into him and frozen all those trifling thoughts and emotions under a pristine sheet of ice. The bones of his despairs were beneath the ice and he could look through the frozen ice and see them, wondering how he had ever feared them in the first place. He could see beneath the glass surface the screaming corpse of his compassion, it had been dead for so long but had never rotted…strange. There was no light in his head to refract in the ice made prisms or at least no single source; instead it was a hazy light that came out of nowhere and everywhere. But there were two totems ascending from the ice. One was a stature of a man whipping himself and the other was of a man with his nose in the air. They both whispered to him strongly. One spoke, "you are the most pathetic of creatures" while the other said, "You deserve to dominate all life". Luzifer let the words of both enter him.

He opened his eyes and Siegfried was looking down at him. They were by the stream and Luzifer stood up. "Let's go", he said and Siegfried nodded in a distracted way. Luzifer didn't waste time thinking about what could be on Siegfried's mind but instead just accepted as being so.

The stepped back on the road and continued on their way. Whichever way that was, Luzifer himself had no clear idea…neither of them had any destination in mind, they were moving for the sake of moving. They had nowhere to go so they moved on and hoped that they eventually found a sunbeam from heaven that would tell them the way.

They walked in silence as always, both young man and old boy lost in their own minds. Siegfried chasing that ray of salvation through the empty darkness forever out of his reach and Luzifer in his frozen skull in which only two emotions lurked. Siegfried with his painful hope and Luzifer to his numbing despair.

They seemed oddly tied to the same plane of existence by shear fact of living in the physical realm but stemming from to different spiritual planes as though to make their coexistence a seeming impossibility. The light from the partially cloudy sky always seemed to fall most heavily on Siegfried and when it did so his armor gave it off in an even stronger fashion causing him to all but glow as he strode easily down the road, hiding completely the weights he bore. The clouds, however, seemed to have made it their goal to protect or to keep Luzifer from the sun and for most of the time he was shrouded in a graying shade that left him dim. The line that separated him from the scenery behind him seemed to erode and he began to become part of the scenery even though he was so chromatically different from the trees and forests. When some light managed to infiltrate past the guard of clouds Luzifer did not radiate the nimbus of luminescence that Siegfried did but instead seemed to thin and dilute the light, possibly even taking some of the fluid luminosity into his self and keep it for his own purposes.

They had not long been walking when the slight rustle of leaves in the trees began to become louder then it should have been given that today was free of wind. At first Luzifer at first skimmed over the noise as just being Tira on her continuing quest to stalk them to the ends of the earth but as the sound began to increase in volume the possibility that only a single person, especially one of Tira's skills, could not be the cause of the noise. Occasionally, he could catch the form of a blur in the corner of his eye but aside from that he could not get a good look at the stalkers. He glanced over at Seigfried who nodded knowingly. The two of the turned back to back and drew their blades from over their shoulders facing the two sides of the road like some strange two faced statue that was supposed to grant travelers good fortune.

The woods stayed silent for a while. Luzifer could hear the faint rustle of leaves but could not see the person, or persons, that was making the noise. Eventually though the woods coughed up its secrets and their stalkers appeared, dropping from the trees lightly and gracefully.

They were each a bit different in their look but they all had a similarity about them that made it was obvious that they had come from the same brood. Each, had skin that skewed towards a sickly pale, as though the skin was so starved for sun that it had died and turned to gray, bloodless ash. Their faces were in someway covered though the method of covering and the degree to which the face was covered varied greatly from individual to individual. Some utilized a thick scarf wrapped around the face from the bridge of the nose down, while others wore full masks, and still others had hoods that shrouded all but their chins from view. They also bore religious symbols upon their cloths and bodies. One had an A inscribed over an M blazoned on his forehead. Another wore a large crucifix around his neck the weight of which made him stoop. A third bore a sweet-smelling censor which had been converted into a flail…or maybe it was the other way around. They were all drabbed in a mix of white and red, the white being of a pure chaste nature that seemed, sickeningly, to offer no contrast with the skin of those who wore it.

Their differences were less noticeable than their similarities and at times it took the eye a moment to grasp that one had a starkly different hair color than the other, so inclined was the mind to perceive them as identical. Differences, though, they did have, the exact way the colors of their uniform garb were worn changed with each individual and their hair and eye color varied along with build and other physical features, but their differences seemed merely skin deep. By not being exactly the same they only further emphasized their similarity to one another.

One among the thirteen which surrounded Siegfried and Luzifer spoke, his voice bearing with it the authority of the entire group, "We come for the descendant of Azazal, for the Nephilim, for the continued existence of the blight of demon blood upon the race of man can not be allowed to continue. Sir Knight we wish no battle with you, if you will turn over the Grigori spawn we will leave you unharmed and no worse off."

"Never!" Siegfried barked, "I will not leave someone to die!" Siegfried held his sword defensively ready to receive any attack, which may come against him. His honor seemed to shine from behind him like two wings of pure white.

Luzifer smirked with a melancholy air, "Thanks, Siegfried… but do you have a plan for extricating ourselves from this quarrel?"

"No Idea. I was planning on fighting as well as we could and dying with honor because there seems to be no way out but by the same token it would be against my honor to betray you, Luz." Siegfried whispered his voice having no fear even with the breath of death wafting against his features.

Luzifer smirked as an idea came to him, a gambit and completely out of nowhere but he had a hunch it might work… I might hurt him like hell to do it, but such were the costs of his crimes. "I have an idea" He whispered, a determined breath weaving its way through the words.

Siegfried nodded resolutely as the assassin began to advance cautiously.

Luzifer pulled himself inward; he pulled all the memories up from beneath the ice for a brief moment and let the pain course through him. The sorrow and hatred played his soul like an instrument and he could feel his heartstring strain to the point of snapping. Suddenly he let all surge forth from him in a demonic scream…

The scream washed over him suddenly and for a moment Siegfried was stunned by the force of it. It lapped over him like waves upon a stone and like the wave it wore him away with a subtle, undermining erosion. It grated against his consciousness but with all his spirit and soul Siegfried pushed the creeping tendrils of despair and madness out of his head. It was difficult, like shutting the door on a familiar friend who you know does not have your best interests in mind when he makes his promises of instant satisfaction. But Siegfried managed it.

Looking outside of his mind, he could see that the assassins had become stunned by the scream and they were standing their hypnotized by the despair and weakness it had brought out in them. Some had blatant faces of disgust, others wore horror, and still others were enthralled with the sinful thoughts that were harbor in every soul, no matter how pure.

Siegfried knew this was the opening he needed and the opening Luzifer had been fishing for when he had released that scream. Siegfried did not waste time and brought his sword around to strike the first assassin within reach.

And the scream went on and on…

Tira was moving quietly through the forest. For now she was using the ground and not staying in the tree limbs because she had noticed people jumping from branch to branch that had the look of assassins. She had been tempted to go after them, but they seemed competent and there were eight of them and while she liked the idea of harvesting their souls for her master, she doubted she would live through the process. She knew she was good but eight people who were also quite good seemed to be pushing her luck.

Suddenly, a scream broke the silence and Tira looked towards it. The wail thrust its tendrils into her but they found nothing to latch onto… no emotions to warp into despair or lust. Just an empty void of feeling.

The animals around her seemed to be affected by it though. As soon as the sound burst through into the woods they instantly stood to attention and stared at it origin. They seemed transfixed by the scream as it slashed its way through the trees toward them. Nothing moved at all, the deer were not taken to fright as they stood drowning in the sound.

Tira, however, could not understand what she heard. She could not grasp or comprehend the pains and evils that floated upon the scream and were intermeshed with it so wholly that it was impossible to separate the emotion from the sound. She simply could not relate to such things because she had no similar equivalent in her own mind. She could, though, recognize that there was something in the scream, something fascinating. So profoundly attached to all the human frailties, which every man and woman bore on his or her neck both as a millstone and a wing. She decided to follow it.

Leaping up into the tree boughs, she moved with deft skill until finally she came to the path in the middle of the forest. There she saw the boy named Luzifer screaming while his partner was just now slicing into one of the eight assassins she had seen with a blade as massive . They seemed pretty similar to some she had on the tip of her memory but could not recall. _How dare they?_ She thought, Luzifer was hers to kill and she didn't like people muscling in on her targets. The assassins seemed caught in the scream as well and were numb to what was going on around them. She smiled, that just made it easier for her. Jumping down silently she imbedded Aiselne Drossel into an assassin's neck.

And the scream went on and on…

Abelard was walking quickly; knowing that he was closing on the demon that had stolen his daughter's soul and killed her was driving him to near bloodlust and drowned him in adrenaline. His age carved features seemed to bear the vigor of a hotheaded youth as he began to smell blood on the air. He tore through the forest in an all consuming stride, too focused on his goal to take note of the surroundings.

That was when Abelard heard the scream. It peeled through the forest and through his frenzied stupor, shocking him into reality. Suddenly his heart seemed to tense and his muscles constricted. He collapsed to one knee and held his chest as the screamed began to pervade his consciousness. He could not focus and he could see the world shifting in to wastes. The world seemed to take on a darker hue and the world was cast in fire. The ground was infertile dust more the soil. Abelard could see a knight with his eyes covered completely by a cloth and his ears covered equally with wool fighting another knight that begged him to stop. But the knight did not and he killed the other. Once he was victorious the knight removed the blindfold, his face instantly became twisted with grief when he saw what he had wrought.

Then the scene shifted and images appeared in his head of all the sins he had ever conceived of and he could feel a lust to perform them beginning to build but at the same time he felt a deep sense of revolt at seeing them.

He was completely caught up in his own evil ever little evil thing no matter how miniscule or pointless seemed like a thousand stones upon his heart but at the same time he felt like he needed them in order to keep on living. That moment of hesitance seemed to drag on forever until finally it cut off and the scream ended.

He was once more in the forest and he felt his muscles start to move again. He knew instantly that the scream must have been the work of the demon. Who else could make a scream of pure sin and evil? He ran through the forest not bothering to follow the path as he made a direct dash for the origin of the scream.

Finally, Luzifer's lungs gave out and the scream stopped by that time Siegfried had killed three and Tira another two. His mind was clear and empty, the emotions he had release shoved away. He was always a void when he fought, it was one of the reasons he had come to love fighting, it washed away his emotions with the constant fear of death and the pumping of adrenaline.

The numbers thus made more even from the repercussions of his scream, Luzifer took a quick breath and charged toward two that were lingering at the edge of the forest. They were now recovering but were able to raise their guard enough to ward away his blow without being harmed beyond the mere shock of the impact. However, they did loose ground and fell back into the forest. Luzifer followed knowing that at any moment they would turn around and begin to fight back. When they did reengage he was ready.

After a brief fight he was able to dispatch one, that one fell bleeding from having Luzifer's Glam embedded in his chest. However, another quickly replaced the fallen assassin, which had followed Luzifer. Luzifer was once again fighting two enemies by himself but was able to hold them off.

During the fight he had noticed Tira fighting against the attackers as well. Luzifer was curious as to why she was fighting, she did not seem to have a reason, unless maybe she didn't want the two blades of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur (which Siegfried was now calling the "Soul Embrace" for some odd reason) to fall into the assassins hands since they were, indeed, the stronger force. They might also have a base or temple of some kind that they would return to with the "Soul Embrace" making it tougher to recover. Still, Luzifer thought it might be wise to talk with her as to her reasons; he didn't like the idea that he might be being used as a tool for someone else's gain.

The fight continued for some time but eventually Luzifer was able to kill his opponents though he bore a few small cuts on his arms, legs, and torso. His head was still a bit amuck from the emotions that had been brought back up in the scream but he was gradually putting them once more beneath a coffin of ice. However, much of his self loathing was still attacking him as it always did and since they were the strongest of his emotions he found it difficult to fully free himself of them. They danced around his waking mind and picked at it playfully, and every time his mind felt that they had gone away they came back harder then ever. It almost felt as though little chunks of his consciousness were being whittled off and used as playthings for the demons that pervaded him.

Luzifer returned his mind to the present reality when he began to hear noises coming from deeper in the forest. He spun to face the noises and was watchful incase it turned out to be more belligerents. The crackling of leaves was both rapid and loud, like a snare drum at fast tempo, and it appeared whoever or whatever was approaching was in a dead sprint. The excitement carried as well and it seemed more to be in exultation of finding then the terror of fleeing that had possessed the runner to put feet into motion.

A figure began to come into view but Luzifer could not obtain a clear idea of what kind of person it was because of the trees that constantly intervened in his line of sight. However, he began to piece together the portrait of a man both aged by time and worn to the heartwood of faith by the travails of life. The man bore a brown beard the hue of dry earth and a full head of hair the same color though intermittent threads of grey could be seen amongst the dusty mane. His body was well-built and the axe on his back, obviously designed more for the work of the woods than that of the battlefield, only further swelled the notion that he was some worker of the fields that lived not far from some woods where he could obtain his daily fire, by grace of his lord of course. The shabby and threadbare clothes completed the picture and they seemed to have one time long ago been white but over the years had be imbued with so much dust that they were now closer to his hair in tint. A faint bloodlust hung in the air as he approached and Luzifer set himself cautiously.

The man seemed to recognize him and his speed increased as he bore down on Luzifer. Taking the axe from his back and brandishing it towards Luzifer, he let loose a cry that bore with it the twin tones of vengeance and the faith of duty. The man swung his heavy axe at Luzifer but the blow was easily avoided and the man's momentum carried him some distance forward before he was able to stop and about face. Luzifer didn't ask why the man was here, he knew he might be some overzealous man of faith from the town he had been in and for whom he had demonstrated some of his ability. He didn't particularly care why this man was here, all that matter was that the peasant was attacking him and such actions could not be allowed to continue.

Luzifer was able to defeat the maggot handily, for all his fervor and bellowing the peon did not possess the skill necessary to defeat one of such bladed skill as Luzifer. The man was still alive though he bore a deep wound to the leg. Luzifer toward over him lazily as though not at all bother by the attack, "Go away, fool. I don't have the time to bother with one as weak as you". Luzifer spoke with the cold arrogance that he had never before heard in his own voice.

But the man just tried to stand using his axe as a support on which to lean when he began to feel his leg about to give out. "No, demon! You killed my daughter and sent her soul to hell so that she would serve your dark master. I will kill you and maybe in doing so free her from such a fate, or if not at least prevent others from falling to the same fate! With God as my witness, you shall be slain!"

Luzifer's attitude immediately shifted, the many tortures that were loose in his mind began to strengthen and all he could think about was Blasa and Jenell, who had died due to him. Even if he had frozen away his pain for a time, he was bothered by the fact that Jenell had committed suicide and he could not help but take the blame for her death. His arrogant apathy gave way to a deep sadness as and he looked at the man cautiously, "Who was your daughter?"

"You don't remember? You bastard! It was some months back. You killed her and left her body at the edge of the forest while giving her the Devil's Last Rights! I saw you! I'll never forget your yellow eyes, the eyes of a wolf eyeing the lambs within God's folds!" The man shouted at him, trying to muster the strength to lift his axe enough to launch a strike but finding himself too wounded to do so.

"Of course I remember Blasa!" he yelled back at the man slamming the blade of his sword into the ground, "She was one of the only people who ever cared about me. She protected me when I was weak. She saved me when I was dying… but I killed her… I didn't mean to though!" Luzifer could barely choke off the last sentence as his motions began to asphyxiate him.

"I don't care what you say demon! You will pay for what you have done. You knew exactly what you were doing when you stole her soul."

"No! I…I'm not a demon! I just lived there in the woods! I was a thief! I stole from the surrounding towns for food but I did not steal her soul!" Luzifer tried to fight off the accusations but they were beginning to crush him under their weight.

"Then explain the screams! Why would you live with a demon in those woods? Even if you are a despicable thief! If you're not a demon then you are the servant of a demon which is just as evil!"

"Those screams were mine but I'm not a demon… I'm not… I can't be" Luzifer said collapsing to his knees, "I don't care! Demon or not I deserve to die! Just strike me down!" Luzifer bent his head forward offering his neck to the strike of the peasant man.

"Don't think your going to trick me, demon! I will kill you and you will have no mercy!" the peasant managed to lift his axe of his head and began to bring down.

The sound of steel on steel could be heard.

Luzifer looked up to see Siegfried's blade between him and the axe. Siegfried pushed the axe back easily and the wielder lost his balance and had to once more lean against the axe hilt for support.

Siegfried looked at the peasant, "What's going on here?"

"I'm about to kill this demon! But you would know that because you're the knight I heard about traveling with this monster! You have sold your soul and strayed from the light of God and for that you will die!" the man yelled.

"Siegfried go away! I killed this man's daughter… he has the right to get revenge on me." Luzifer said emphatically.

"Luz pull yourself together! We have all done things wrong in our lives but you can't make up for them by getting yourself killed foolishly! Corpses can't redeem themselves!" Siegfried shouted at Luzifer then rounded on the man who was accosting him, "And I don't know much about Luz… he maybe a demon, I don't know for sure. But what I do know, and I believe this to the point of death, is that he only has good goals at heart… he does not act out of evil intent."

"You are all just trying to trick me! I will not be put aside!" the axeman yelled in unthinking rage.

Luzifer was about to open his mouth to ask Siegfried to step aside and let him die, when he saw Blasa kneeling beside him. Only Blasa was giving off some strange glow that seemed to bathe him in serenity and she lacked substance. Her body had the consistency of mist and was just as lucid. She smiled at him warmly, and, putting her arm around him, helped him stand up. Luzifer noticed the Siegfried was looking at Blasa, while the peasant did not appear to notice her, even though she was presumably his daughter. Luzifer could only assume that meant that the man did not see her at all.. "Luzifer…" she whispered, "You can't let yourself die here. You still have much to live for and it would sadden me greatly to see you die. I still care about you Luzy. You're the only real friend I ever had, I don't know if I told you that. So please, Luzy, live on and do what you feel is right." With that she faded away completely. Luzifer clenched his fist and nodded. He may never purge himself of his evil but he would try, for Blasa , Jenell and his mother's sakes more so then his own.

"No… I can't die here not yet! You must believe me when I say that I did not mean to kill your daughter… it was an accident… the burden I will bear to the end of my days. Please do not fight me, if not for your sake than for Blasa's. I can only assume that she would be sad if you died and I do not wish to do her still further harm by killing her father as well, but I will if you continue to fight me."

"Demon, I can not let you leave. You just want me to leave so that you can steal yet more souls, like you did to my daughter! But more importantly, you stain God with your very existence. The very fact that something as loathsome as you is allowed to exist cannot be forgiven!" The peasant began to heft his axe weakly but his muscles gave out and he collapsed to the ground like a newborn calf, which has not yet developed the muscles necessary to stand.

Luzifer held solid against the accusations that crashed against him. He would not let them touch his guilt, the sensitive underbelly, which his entire consciousness was shaped around, the tougher outer shell of some soft weak animal. Luzifer let his sword fall to the ground, "You are probably right and I am a stain. But I will clean myself of this evil and weakness that I brought upon myself with your daughters death. I don't care if you don't believe me, but I do not wish to kill you. Please, Blasa's father, grant me the chance to redeem myself."

Luzifer kneeled down and picked up his sword. He easily sheathed it over his back and walked away. "I do not trust you" the peasant screamed… "I will follow you till the end of days!"

Luzifer looked down and clenched his fist again, as though trying to convince himself of his own determination; so uncertain was he that he even possessed the will to keep putting one foot in front of the other. "Demon!" Luzifer looked backed knowing it was he being addressed.

"What? Is it fool?" Luzifer asked his demeanor starting to fall back into its usual place.

"I will not leave you alone to wreck havoc, if that is indeed your design. I will watch and make sure that nothing you do will further stain the light of God. I trust my life only so much because I believe that his knight, whose name I have not been honored with knowing, is pure and goes with God."

Luzifer sighed… he didn't want to travel with this man but he felt he owned it to Blasa, she had saved his life and he knew this wouldn't pay his debt to her but that didn't mean he shouldn't make payment towards it. "Alright, you may come, but we are still mere wanderers. You shall have no grand purpose until we can figure out the course that needs to be taken".

:"Do I look like I care what this… purpose of yours accomplishes as long as it is not a blemish to God." The peasant shot back belligerently. Siegfried was now helping him up and carrying him closer to the path.

Siegfried called to Luzifer, "Luz, I think that we should stop here and rest… this man needs his wounds patched and I fear it may take at least a day before the wounds have clotted enough that he can begin to move."

Luzifer shrugged, "I am following you, Siegfried, not the other way around. If you wish to rest here a day then so be it. I'll leave you to prepare camp, I want to take a look at these… enemies for lack of a more specific word. Death it seems is a companion one can never shake from ones coattails." Luzifer's tone at the last sentence turned vague and he was too lost in his own thoughts to pay attention to what his mouth was saying.

Jenell had been running through the events of the past day in her head for a while now. It still amazed her that randomly, after she had died, she appears in some ruined city, is chased around by men cloaked in alabaster fire and then is saved by some girl in a similar situation. Her brain was completely focused on figuring out why this had happened but nothing came. This place seemed like neither heaven nor hell nor limbo nor purgatory. It was just someplace she could not comprehend… it existed outside the realm of her knowledge but had an intimate familiarity about it that seemed ingrained upon the very fabric of her soul. No, it was remembered by the threads from which her soul was woven.

The stone walls of the cellar seemed to be perforated with a matter that did not belong to reality. It was not visible to the eye nor felt by touch nor detected by any sense except that simple human cognizance that whispered that it was there. It pervaded every "physical" thing in the room from the books to even the flames which to her had never seemed particularly of the mortal realm in the first place. She no longer believed even the bed on which she now sat had ever belonged to a plane which could be described as "material". These objects, though ordinary, seemed to have been raised above the mere copies that proliferated the world she had called home before, as though all her old objects were mere copies that aspired to be like these divine examples.

The cellar itself was of a stone she could not identify but it seemed to be a mixture of white and black flakes that had been pressed together for such a length of time and with such force that they had become fused along definite but blurred lines. Occasionally, strands of black wove out from the main black continents into the white oceans and that opposite was true as well, tying the two together in various knots.

The cellar's layout was not incredibly complex. Coming from the door the Jenell had entered with Blasa one followed a tunnel for some few strides before arriving at archway that went in three directions forming a crossroads. To the left was a room that had another door that led to the surface but which was completely block by a fallen statue of what seemed to be an angel with wings outstretched. It now had only one and half wings since in its fall it must have shattered one… or maybe that wing had been shattered before the statue fell. But the oddest part of the statue was that one of its wings, the broken one, was made of white marble while the other was made of jet black onyx and in its right hand it wielded a large, fleshy sword while its left hand was a mutated claw that seemed much like a bird of prey's. There was another angel statue that one could see from the door that Jenell had entered from but it was a more typical angelic form, at least according to the sermons of the her old pasture. The only thing about that statue that caught the eye was the sword it held in both hands, a sword that was colored the most amazing shade of blue. It was the kind of blue the kind of blue that one saw if one looked through frosted glass at a summer sky. Powerful, yet soft.

The air of the cellar was dry but not nearly as arid as the air in the city above which seemed to continue more dust the water and dried the mouth with but a single breath. The main reason for the more comfortable atmosphere of the cellar was a small spring of water that flowed through a crack on the wall of the last room in the string of three which one came to if they went right at the crossroad. It was a translucent vine that twisted from the crack in the wall into a pool that had been constructed in the floor of the room. The spring was a rivulet that wound its way over the rough surface of the stone and gave forth a soothing sound that one imagined was the sound of rain if only two or three droplets were aloud to hit the ground at any one time. The sound pervaded almost the entire cellar and produced a calming effect that seemed to easy the many worries that often troubled Jenell. Jenell was glad for this small comfort. It allowed her to think for long periods of time without getting frustrated, as the constant noise seemed to make all other things transient and minor. It was the best place she could come up with to do thinking and reading.

It seemed that Jenell was not alone in finding the properties of the stream conducive of meditation and the scholarly pursuits as the final of the four directions from the crossroads ended in a massive library of grandiose size. Blasa had mentioned briefly in the few hours Jenell had known her that she had read a few of the books that were written in German. Blasa said that a boy she knew had taught her to read German and that among the many books was a German dictionary and several books on learn languages, some were from one language she didn't know to a language she knew even less of but enough were from german to another that as she learned one language she could then have the option of learning more and thus could get them all. Up until now she had only learn a smattering of Hebrew since many books were in that language.

It made Jenell feel a little small to here about this as she herself was illiterate.

So for now the greater part of the library's secrets remained yet unseen but from the glimpse Blasa had gotten she said that most pertained to things of a heretical or religious nature, though she could not be pressed for more details at the time.

Jenell was now sitting in on one of the beds in the room the she shared with Blasa. It was directly attached to the spring room and had a small sitting room between it an the crossroads, the gaps between each of these small areas was partitioned of by an arch way and a screen that permitted cool, wet area of the spring to gain entrance to the rest of the cellar.

Blasa had recited what had brought her to the cellar with Jenell and it was a story that reminded Jenell of her own. Blasa told her a brief history of her life, how she had been raised as a farming peasant in a small village near two large trading towns and how when she was 14 she met a boy in the forest who she become friends with. Though, Blasa talked with all smiles she rushed through and underemphasized anything dealing directly with the boy, handling it quickly and gingerly like a roses thorns. Jenell noticed Blasa's eyes had a look in there emerald depths that she had recognized with other girls who were quite popular with the boys of her hometown, though Blasa seemed to have more of a brain on her shoulders then those she was being compared to. However, when her story came to the boy, whom she never once gave a name to, the look would disappear and a very different one would set in, quite the opposite of the carefree and flirtatious look that they normally held.

Jenell then told her own story as quickly as she could and completely edited Luzifer out of the story not want to deal with the emotions he brought up. The emotions made her feel good but knowing he was far away (or at least she presumed him far away, for no reason other than that it felt so) gave a cold hollow tinge to the emotions and threaten to burst some small bubble of tears that had floated through her heart since seeing Luzifer pained yellow eyes glowing for her like twin suns in the night just before she died. Her reason for death, which she felt, was not to far from the truth, was that a bandit had killed her.

They had made some minor conversation asking dead end questions about where they were, how they were going to get back to where they were, or, even if going back was possible considering both had died. They both quickly dismissed the idea that where they were could be heaven or hell as it was far to bad for the former and not bad enough to be the later. Blasa, remembering something from a sermon her pastor would give, offered up the idea of this being Limbo, but it they felt sensations such as hunger, pain, joy, and sadness here, though admittedly the joys were minor, so it could not be the eternal neutral of Limbo.

This had led to a brief discussion of the sermons each of their preachers used to give. Blasa was either a more attentive churchgoer or had a more interesting minister for she remembered many things from her church and even said that she had given someone a name based off of a sermon. Jenell asked who but Blasa became evasive and changed the topic, leading Jenell to the conclusion that the person was probably the boy from her past. Jenell could remember very little from her own days as member of a congregation, though Jenell openly admitted she was completely apathetic to the whole thing and was already quite shunned as the town's mischievous thief. Well, shunned by adults.

Returning to thoughts of the world at hand, Jenell wondered why she hadn't seen Blasa for a while now even though she had looked in every room and was wondering what had happened to the girl.

The door to the room opened revealing the form of Blasa, who smiled dimly at Jenell and gave out a distracted, "Hello".

Jenell was becoming rather fond of the younger girl because of her spirt. She was quite impressed with her light-personality and was now shocked to see Blasa seemingly lost in some deep quagmire of thought or emotion. Jenell's first impression of the girl was that nothing could stick to her and that she was empty-headed enough not to let it bother her but smart enough to learn from it, far distant from from the introverted girl that had walked into the room.

"Is something wrong? You don't seem very… here" Jenell questioned looking at Blasa with a worried furrow creating a slight trench upon her brow that made her seem even older then the girl then she actually was.

"It's… It's just I was…worried about… an old friend of mine." Blasa said hesitatingly and it was obvious from her manner that she was not telling the truth but instead answering in a way that would provide as little information as she was willing to give.

"The boy you mentioned?" It would have to be. Jenell had been around long enough to know when a girl was thinking of a boy she was romantically interested in rather then any other person in the world, the sort of bashfully trepidation that only an emotion of such strength as love can cause in a person. The only emotion as strong as love was hate and no one was embarrassed about hating something.

Jenell had suspected that Blasa harbored such emotions for the boy she had mentioned but she could not have been certain at the time. It was one of the sort of gossipy suspicions that she had long prided herself on not being so low as to stoop to spreading. Now, she was certain. The emotions on the girl's face were bare and plain, there was nothing that could cause Jenell to second guess herself now.

Blasa looked up, "…no… yes… yes it was him. Its just that when I really think about him, I can feel him. Not like a touch, but more his… aura. The feelings he has and what he keeps hidden. It's scary."

"How is it scary?" Jenell asked what even propriety she might have had cast aside by the biting curiosity that gnawed at her.

"I want to help him but I can't... I saw him… and he was just so sad. He can't see anything. Can't see anything but the truth…"

Luzifer waited until nightfall. Siegfried and Abelard had spoken for a while and seemed to not mind the others company. Abelard was quite obviously a man driven almost entirely by faith and once he had seen the obvious good in Siegfried's character took it on face value assuming that the man must be good to the core. Luzifer himself made no such assumptions. Siegfried was a good man and Luzifer couldn't take that away from him but still everyone has their dark little secrets hidden inside them. Or some displayed those evil flaws on the surface.

Abelard had his own evils but Luzifer doubted he viewed them as such. The man thought himself good and thus he must be whole good, whatever personality quirks he might have were obvious either negligible or good in their own right.

Luzifer quietly contemplated the hidden threats that these men could hold. Siegfried a former host of Soul Edge might still harbor some… residue from that experience or maybe he possessed a tragic weakness of character that had lead to him being exploited by the sword. Either way it could become an obstacle to Luzifer who needed a variable free environment if he was going to be able to destroy Soul Edge. Abelard's weakness also represented a potential risk. It would be easy enough to predict his actions if Luzifer was aware of the stimuli being put upon the man but since he could not be omniscient on such a matter something could happen that would endanger Luzifer's goals.

However, at the moment having fighters with him expedited his progress as well as securing his life for the time being. He also could not ignore the fact that Siegfried was intimately tied to the existence of the blade he must destroy. The blade he must destroy because it was so similar to himself.

_But isn't he my ally? If not my friend!_

_No… I am to stained by the evil that I have wrought by killing those I care about to have friends. Crushing Soul Edge is the only way I can redeem myself and so any variables should be considered an opposition to that goal…_

_But how is that the path of redemption?_

Luzifer pushed the thoughts out of mind. Siegfried and Abelard were asleep which meant he had a meeting with a certain angel of death to attend to. Yeah, angel of death. That seemed to suit the girl just perfectly.

The night was calm and the occasional clouds that obscured the moon did not bring any fear in there wake. Some nights when the moon was hidden a sense of dread would creep into peoples spines as the visibility diminished and the hidden shapes in the darkness twisted into the monsters. But this night was not like that. Luzifer felt calm and at ease as he walked away from camp. If the girl tried to kill him again well… he could handle those eventualities. The girl was a variable. But he could not make himself kill her.

When he had been placing Jenell's body into the earth he had made a silent promise to her. No, a promise to Jenell, Blasa, His mother, and himself. _From this day on, no matter what happens, I will never kill a woman, even if a woman wants to kill me._

And that was a promise Luzifer would never break even at the cost of his life, even his redemption was less important then that promise. He had too much female blood on his hands and his guilt could not bear anymore.

The almost silent landing of a girl behind him brought him back from his painful revelries. "I expected you to come…"

Tira's brimmed with fake disappointment and Luzifer almost thought it was real if not for its over done nature, "awww… and here I though I was going to give you a surprise!"

"hmph… whatever. But I must ask you something, why did you fight for me?"

Tira looked confused for a moment, her brow wrinkled and her head tilted to the side, "For you? How can I fight for you when I don't serve you? That doesn't make any sense!"

This woman appeared to be a literalist it seemed. He remembered the difficult he had had trying to grasp what people called "figures of speech" how he was not used to things that were untrue at face value but were in there intent true. He would need to translate. "I'm sorry, I meant why did you take part in the fight against the attackers while not fighting against me since I'm the one you want to kill."

"Oh! Well why did you say so!" Tira exclaimed her fists pressed against her hips in a domineering fashion that did quite make up for the height difference between the two of them. Luzifer easily towering over the short girl, "Well, it's simple! My master said to follow you and so I will. The fact that you have Soul Edge and I'll be able to keep an eye on that as well only makes the arrangement better!" She beamed at her own luck and brilliance in figuring something like that. But of course it was all fake.

:"Couldn't you have killed me and taken the blade? Why didn't you?" Luzifer inquired taking a stepped forward and using his advantage in height to loom over her.

"ah…" She tapped her finger against her green lips in pensive thought. Was she just making up her reason up now? Just trying to come up with an explanation for an action she didn't think through? Pathetic.

He must have let his annoyance show on his features more then he had intended because Tira because increasingly awkward. She seemed be sweating slightly and was tense. What's more it seemed real. "Well… I… er…" Tira stammered, " You know what? I don't really know I just did!"

Luzifer sighed heavily and gripped the bridge of his nose in annoyance, "whatever… I don't have time for this crap… I just thought you would have a good reason… nevermind" Luzifer walked back to the camp not caring if she tried to attack him while his back was turned. He had found a book on the assassins and wanted to read it.

Tira watched him walk away and sighed. She could still feel the worm in her stomach and it was annoying. She couldn't look Luzifer in the eye when he got her like this, it just became to painful and annoying.

She had a reason, but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to say it to him. For the first time she had thought that it might sound silly or something if she said it. It was odd. She didn't remember really caring what her reasons sound like to other but at that moment that damnable maggot inside her had eaten her resolve. It was truly obnoxious.

But it was nice to know that indeed she could be like normal people, she just need to keep following Luzifer. Once she did and she could understand emotions then she would never have to kill her family again. Never again.


End file.
